Stranger
by Dancerx11
Summary: Edward moved to Forks in 4th grade, he and Bella became best friends. Edward has to move again and he and Bella are separated. During the summer into senior year, Bella goes to a camp and reunites with an old friend. But why is she so cold? All human
1. Prologue

_Summary: When Edward moved to Forks in 4th grade, he and Bella became best friends. Two years later, Edward has to move again and he and Bella are separated. During the summer into junior year, Bella goes to a camp and is reunited with a certain bronze haired boy. But why is Bella upset with the boy she sees and why is she so cold towards him? All Human_

Prologue

_There's no kindness in your eyes,  
The way you look at me, it's just not right.  
I can tell what's going on this time,  
There's a stranger in my life.  
You're not the person that I once knew.  
Are you scared to let them know it's you?  
If they could only see you like I do,  
Then they would see a stranger too…_

_Did I ever do anything that was this cruel to you?  
Did I ever make you wonder who was standing in the room?  
You made yourself look perfect in every way,  
So when this goes down, I'm the one that will be blamed.  
Your plan is working so you can just walk away,  
Baby your secret's safe._

_There's no kindness in your eyes,  
The way you look at me, it's just not right.  
I can tell what's going on this time,  
There's a stranger in my life.  
You're not the person that I once knew.  
Are you scared to let them know it's you?  
If they could only see you like I do,  
Then they would see a stranger too…_

_Such a long way back, from this place that we are at.  
When I think of all the time I've wasted, I could cry…_

_(Stranger by Hilary Duff)_


	2. Best Friends

**A/N: Hey guys! Okay so here's the first chapter of my new story, that you guys voted for on my profile. This chapters a little jumpy at times, but it gets better I promise. So I'll have the second chapter out in a couple of days, it's already written so don't worry, I have that chapter and the third one done. So, welcome to the first chapter of Stranger…**

**Disclaimer: I am not Stephenie Meyer, sadly. Although it would be nice to be her…**

Chapter One

Best Friends

BPOV (8 years Old)

Today is my first day of fourth grade. I'm really nervous. What if the kids don't like me? Who will I sit with at lunch? Play with on the playground? I've been going to Forks Elementary School since first grade, but I could never find any real friends in my class. I was too shy. There are some girls that I liked, like Angela, but she's not in my class this year, she's in Mr. Mason's class. I'm in Mr. Banner's.

I walked down the hallway with my backpack on, my lunch box in my right hand and my eyes wide. I had never been to the fourth and fifth grade wing before. It was so big! A bunch of fifth graders passed me and giggled. I blushed and looked down. I was wearing my favorite white shirt with flowers down the center and jean shorts. It didn't look funny to me. I had just bought it. My mommy took me shopping. I didn't want to go but she said that I needed a new shirt for a new grade. I thought my clothes from last year were okay, but I guess my mommy knows best.

I walked into my classroom, biting my bottom lip. I did that a lot. I don't know why. I guess I just do it cause I'm nervous. Really nervous. I found my desk. It had a label on it that said ISABELLA SWAN. Ew, I don't like my full name. I like just Bella better. Isabella is too long and grown up. Maybe if I scribble out the ISA, it would work. Hm, but then it would be ugly. I decided just to leave it. I put my backpack down and sat in the chair. Some kids were playing over in the corner but I didn't want to join them. If they ask me, then I will, but I won't go over by myself.

I was sitting in my chair playing with my dark brown curly hair when I heard the chair next to me move. I didn't notice before, but I was sitting at a table with four desks. I looked next to me and saw a girl that couldn't be a fourth grader. She was _so_ tiny! She had spikey black hair, green eyes (**I don't know if Alice actually has green eyes, but she does in this story)** and was wearing a shirt that said, "Shopping is my Life". She sat down and smiled at me.

"HI! My name is Alice Cullen. What's yours?" She asked me. I looked down and blushed. I didn't remember ever seeing her before. Maybe she just moved here.

"Bella." I said quietly. I looked back up and she was smiling.

"Ohhh! Let's be best friends!" She squealed. I wasn't so sure.

"But, we just met?"

"That's okay! You'll be my new best friend. And it's okay not to know a lot about a new best friend because if you already knew stuff about them, then they wouldn't be new. Duh!" I smiled. I liked her, she seemed really nice. "Oh! We _have_ to go see my brother. He needs to meet my new best friend!"

"Your brother? What grade is he in?" I asked. I didn't have any brothers or sisters. It was just me, mommy and daddy at home. And sometimes a fish, but not usually. They always died on me.

"He's in our class silly! He's my twin" She said with another smile. She grabbed my hand and took me out to the cubbies trying to look for her brother. Her hand on my wrist hurt a little bit, but I was happy that I made a new friend already.

"Edward!" Alice yelled to a boy who was bent over, looking for something in his backpack. He turned around and smiled at her. He had really messy hair. He needed to brush it, it looked really knotty. That wouldn't be fun for him later. My hair was really knotty once and it took mommy a really long time to get it unknotty. His hair was a weird color. It wasn't really red, but it wasn't really brown. I didn't really think Alice was telling the truth when she said that they were twins until I looked at his eyes, they were the same bright green as Alice's.

"Hi Alice. Who's your friend?" He looked directly at me. All of a sudden, I couldn't speak. I wasn't sure why, I mean I know I'm shy. But this is different.

"Edward, this is Bella, my _new_ best friend" I don't know how her smile got bigger, but it did. "And Bella, this is my annoying twin brother, Edward."

"Hi, Bella" Edward said. I smiled and blushed. I didn't get why I was acting like this I mean, he was a boy, why would I act like this around a boy?

"S-so why haven't I ever seen you guys before?" I stuttered, stupid Bella!

"Well, we just moved here from Chicago, our daddy's a doctor!"

"That's _so_ cool! My daddy's the police chief" I said, smiling. All the kids really liked my daddy's job.

"Really? Does he ever shoot people?" Edward asked. I looked at him weird

"Of _course_ not! Why would he want to shoot someone?"

"He would want to shoot the bad guys, duh" Edward answered.

"But there aren't any bad guys in Forks silly!" I said with a laugh.

Edward looked me in the eyes and smiled. Then he started laughing with me. I was right. There weren't any bad guys in Forks, I mean it was _Forks._

And from that day on, Edward and Alice were my best friends. A lot of the time I liked hanging out with Edward more, because Alice usually liked to play Barbie on me. Edward just let me be myself while we played.

Through fourth and fifth grade I was at the Cullen's whenever I could. If we couldn't play at their house, they would come over at my house. During the summer we would have sleepovers and play all night.

Now it was the summer going into sixth grade. We were moving up to Forks Junior High. As usual, I was over at the Cullen's and it was sunny out, a very rare thing in Forks.

"So, what do you guys want to do?" I asked them. I was playing outside with Edward and Alice. Esme wanted us out of the house because she was cleaning.

"I don't know." Said Edward.

"Oh! I know! Lets—"

"No shopping Alice!" Edward and I cut her off in unison. That's what Alice always wanted to do.

"I wasn't going to say that I was _going_ to say lets do—"

"No makeovers Alice!" Edward and I cut her off again.

Alice huffed. "Again, I wasn't going to say that. I was _going _to say… _again_ that we should play dodgeball"

"Dodgeball?" I asked confused. Usually Alice was against any kind of sport, unless it was baseball. The whole family had this weird thing for baseball.

"Yes, dodgeball. You and me against poor little Eddie over there." Alice said with a smile. Edward frowned. He hated it when she called him Eddie.

Next thing I knew we were playing dodgeball in the backyard and Alice and I were kicking butt. We got Edward about 10 times and he only got us 3 times each. I was running to get the ball when I noticed Edward was following closely behind me, so I sped up. I picked up the ball with my back towards Edward. What I didn't notice was that Edward had sped up and was now right behind me. And I really mean _right_ behind me.

"Gotcha!" He whispered in my ear. And I felt his arms wrap around me to try to get the ball. I felt a sort of electricity surge through me when his arms enclosed me. I froze for a moment, why did I feel this way? Why was my heart beating so fast? I was running, that's why. It has nothing to do with the fact that I have Edward's arms wrapped around me.

"Alice!" I was finally able to yell out. I couldn't move, Edward was really strong. I don't know how he got so strong I mean he's only 12 years old! Alice ran around me and I tossed the ball to her and Edward let me go. I shouldn't have felt like a part of me had gone missing when he let go of me.

At noon, Esme called us in for lunch, announcing that we could now play in the house. This was a good thing because, being in Forks, the nice weather didn't last, and it started to rain.

We ended up watching movies the rest of the day and I slept over again.

In the morning my mommy picked me up for a doctors appointment. A couple months ago, I fell on the playground and split my chin open, today I was getting my stitches out. Mommy promised that I could go back over to the Cullen's as soon as I was done. Esme was making me a cake to celebrate my stitches coming out.

I got back to the Cullen's with a bandage on my chin, just so no icky germs got in my cut before it healed completely. Alice and Edward greeted me at the door with excited looks on their faces.

"Bella guess what!" Alice yelled. She ran over to me and started jumping.

"What Alice?"

"We're going on VACATION! TO THE CARIBBEAN!" Alice yelled.

"Oh my gosh that's so exciting! When are you guys going? Cause I'm going to have to figure out what to do!" Alice giggled. They were leaving in a week and were staying for 2 weeks. I guess I would have to catch up on my summer reading while they were gone because then I'd have nothing to do.

After the Cullen's went on vacation, I found myself very bored. I really did play with them all the time. The 2 weeks went by extremely slow and I was counting down the days till they returned.

For the majority of their vacation, I played over at the Black's house with Jacob. He was a couple years younger but he seemed okay. He had hung out with me and Alice and Edward sometimes during the summer sometimes. Alice and Edward didn't like him too much, but they were nice enough to him. We usually just played games in his garage and when Billy wasn't looking, we'd sneak some warm sodas. Billy caught us a couple of times, but we did it anyway. I wasn't sure why we did, we knew we'd get caught. I liked the thrill of possibly getting caught by Billy.

I think that was why Alice and Edward didn't like Jacob. I was always doing no so good things when I was with him.

"So, the Cullens are coming back tomorrow?" Jake asked the day before the Cullens came back.

"Yeah, I can't wait. It's been a whole two weeks since I've seen them" I said excitedly.

"You know Edward has a crush on you right?" Jake said, trying to get me to be less excited. Wait, what? No, Edward couldn't have a crush on me… could he?

"What are you talking about? Edward's like, my best friend Jake! He doesn't have a crush on me!" I said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Jake just shook his head.

The next day, the Cullens came back and I was really excited. But what Jake said kept coming back to me. Did Edward like me?

I waited by the phone, because Alice said she'd call me when they got back from their vacation. My mommy kept telling me that waiting by the phone wouldn't make them call faster; it would only make it come slower. I didn't care though; I sat by the phone in a chair. Even at dinner, I didn't move. I brought my dinner to the chair and ate by the phone. Every time it would ring, I'd get all excited. But it every time, it was someone for one of my parents or it was a telemarketer. I wonder if you can stop all calls except for one house, cause that would make everything so easy.

I started to fall asleep and I felt my daddy take me up to my bed. I wanted to tell him to bring me back to the phone, Alice might call, but I was too tired. I fell asleep quickly.

"BELLA!" I heard someone scream my name. I was confused.

"BELLA!" they screamed again, and I felt someone jump on my bed. I rubbed my eyes, opened them, and saw a pixie on my bed. Wait, it was only Alice…. ALICE!

"YOU'RE HOME!" I yelled and she tackled me. We were laughing and talking for a while, me still in my pajamas. She told me all about their vacation, I wish I could have been there.

"Hey… Alice?" I asked. I wanted to know if Jake was right, but I didn't exactly know how.

"Yeah?" Alice said.

"Um… does…. Edward like me?" I asked before I hid my face. I can't believe I just asked her that! That is so embarrassing! "Cause I was talking to Jake and he said he did." I tried to save my embarrassment.

"Well… I don't know if I should tell you… but you're my best friend so I guess I can. Yeah, I'm like, almost positive he does."

I thought after Alice confirmed that Edward liked me, it would be really weird around him, but it wasn't. It was just like before they left to go on vacation. I wasn't sure why but it was.

Edward was still the one I came to when I had problems, like when my parents started fighting. Their house wasn't all that far away, so when I heard the yells from downstairs, I'd climb out of my window and onto the roof part underneath my window and down the house. For a really clumsy person, I never once fell while doing it. I would run to their house and Edward knew what was wrong. I would cry in his arms for hours before I would run back to my house and back into my room. My parents never knew I was gone. They were to busy fighting.

School started in September and I was really nervous, like usual. But this was a little different. It was junior high. I was in sixth grade now. Alice and Edward were in a couple of my classes and we all had lunch together. The first day wasn't too bad but I couldn't wait to get to lunch.

"So, Bella, how's your first day so far?" Edward asked me when I sat down with my lunch. I gave him a look that explained it all. "Come on, it can't be that bad." I sighed. He was right, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was.

We went through the same schedule everyday, and I ate with them everyday. It wasn't until October that things started to go bad. My parents were fighting a lot more than usual and I was getting worried. But one day when I was over at the Cullen's, everything got a lot worse.

I walked up to the house and rang the doorbell. It took a couple of minutes for them to answer and when Alice answered the door, she wasn't her perky self. It was confusing, but she wouldn't tell me. We went upstairs into the guest bedroom and Alice went to go get some movie choices. When she came back, Edward was with her, and had the same sad expression on his face.

"Okay will someone please tell me what's going on and why you're so sad?" I asked finally. They looked at each other and then Edward looked at me. He walked over to me and sat next to me on the bed. He sighed.

"Bella… we're…" He stopped. He took a deep breath and started again. "We're moving." He whispered. I froze. This couldn't be happening. They were my best friends, they couldn't be moving!

"What! Wh-when? Why?" I stuttered. I was so confused. Why were they leaving me, they can't leave me!

"My dad got a job in California. He couldn't turn it down." Edward looked so beat, it was almost killing me. "We're leaving in three weeks" Three weeks, that's all I had left with my best friends.

"But… we'll try and visit often. We promise" Alice finally spoke up and came over and hugged me. I saw her look up at Edward and I followed her gaze. He was getting something out of his pocket.

"Bella, we bought you this when we went to the Caribbean but, we kind of forgot to give it to you until now." He said as he handed me a package. I opened it and found inside was a gold locket with a pretty cursive "B" on the front. I smiled and thanked them as I put it in my pocket. The rest of the day was boring, we watched movies all day, and it rained.

The next few weeks flew by a lot faster than I wanted them to. Before I knew it, I was standing outside of the Cullen house, getting ready to say goodbye.

Carlisle and Edward packed up the car, the moving van had already left, and Esme was talking to my parents. Alice and I were just standing there, looking at each other, both with looks of sadness. When the car was finally packed, Alice tackled me in a tear filled hug and held on until Esme pulled her off. I was crying too and Edward came to say goodbye. He gave me a hug and looked into my eyes. Then he got into the car. Carlisle and Esme each gave me a hug, said their goodbyes and drove off. I kept crying even when we got back to the house.

I was very boring in school for the next couple of days, Angela and Jessica kept asking me if I was okay, and I kept telling them I was. Since the day they left, I wore the locket they gave me. When I wore it, I felt like they were with me, as stupid as that was.

Alice called a week after they left and we talked for a while.

"Bella, I gotta go" I could hear the sadness in her voice. I frowned.

"Okay, but I'll talk to you soon?"

"Definitely! We'll keep in touch, Bells"

We didn't keep in touch. That time was the only time I had spoken to them since they moved. I tried to call her and Edward, but they were always out or busy with something when I called. And when Esme and Carlisle told me they'd call back, they never did. I finally stopped calling them.

In January, my parents finally got divorced. It wasn't much of a surprise to me; I had learned to deal with it. My mom wanted to get out of Forks and it wasn't until then that I realized that I wanted to as well. I moved with my mom to Phoenix and restarted my life, trying to forget about the two best friends that forgot about me.

**A/N: Ahh! First chapter!! Hehe. Now, this was a little hard to write because I tried to make it sound like they were younger, so sorry if it doesn't sound like that. Okay so Bella, Alice and Edward's shirts from the first day of school are on a link on my profile, if you care to see them. I found this way is much easier to make sure everyone can see the pictures… or at least I hope they can. Someone tell me if they can't so that I can figure out a solution. So please review! Because that makes me want to give my next chapter out =]**

**~Dancerx11**


	3. Phoenix Heat

**A/N: Yay! Okay, so here's the second chapter of Stranger. I didn't get as many reviews as I would have liked for the last chapter but, I'm not going to beg for reviews and also, it was only the first chapter and not my best one at that. So, hopefully I get a couple more reviews for this one but if not its cool =]**

**Disclaimer: No, I am not Stephenie Meyer! This is getting ridiculous! I'm not her!**

Chapter Two

Phoenix Heat

BPOV (17 turning 18)

It was the summer going into senior year. Life in Phoenix was amazing. I loved the sun, I loved the heat, and I loved the fact that it was the exact opposite of Forks. It allowed me to repress those painful memories of my childhood friends, and really live my life. I only really remembered them when it rained, and that wasn't often. I wasn't exactly popular in my school, there were over 3,000 in my grade alone, but I had more friends than I had in Forks. Renee, my mother, had remarried. A man named Phil lived with us now and he was my step-dad. I liked him, and he was perfect for my mother.

School had just let out, at the beginning of June, and I was excited to have the days to myself, without school interfering. I was getting ready to go to the local pool when my mom stopped me.

"Bella, I forgot to tell you, how silly of me" Renee giggled, and then looked back up at me, "You're working as a counselor at Camp Pacific Coast, you leave for orientation in a week."

"What?" I asked confused, I hadn't applied for a job this summer, especially not at a camp. Camps equaled rocks, sticks, roots, branches, and other dangerous things. Well, dangerous things for a klutz like me. I wouldn't subject myself to that kind of embarrassment. Knowing me, I'd trip over a root taking my campers with me, rolling down a hill, and into the lake covered in dirt. Then try and get out of the lake, only to realize that I broke my ankle and sprained my wrist and have to try and carry a camper who's just as injured as I am. Then come back to camp and repeat the whole process over again. Not such a good idea.

"Mrs. Thompson works with the camp, you know the woman who's kids you babysat? And they were looking for new counselors, she recommended you, called me, and you were hired!" Renee said with a smile on her face and walked out of the room. I couldn't believe her! How could she accept a job offer for the whole summer without even asking me? I knew there was absolutely no way of getting out of this, especially if I had to be at orientation in a week. She didn't even tell me where this camp was! The nerve of my mother.

I heard the doorbell ring and went to go answer it, still peeved at Renee. I opened the door and there stood my best friends, Rosalie and Jasper Hale. They were brother and sister and both incredibly good looking. Rosalie was tall and blonde and unimaginably gorgeous. The most beautiful part of her were her eyes that were so deep blue, they were almost violet. Jasper was a year older and also tall and blonde, but his eyes were a beautiful ice blue. Usually, ice blue eyes made people look intense and intimidating, but Jasper's eyes had a softness to them. It was like they could see into your soul and understand exactly what you were feeling. Which sometimes, it was like he could feel whatever you were feeling. He was going off to college in the fall. I felt completely insignificant when I was with them, but I didn't care, they were my best friends.

"Hey Bells! You ready?" Rose asked me. I sighed, we were supposed to be going off to the pool and I was ready, in my bathing suit, had my pool bag in hand and my favorite aviators on my head. But suddenly I didn't want to go to the pool.

"I don't know if I want to go anymore. My mom just told me awful news." I said with a frown and walked into my family room and sat on the couch. Rose and Jasper followed me in. Jasper sat across from me on the edge of the coffee table and Rosalie sat next to me. They knew I didn't cancel plans unless something was really on my mind. And I didn't usually cancel plans, the last time I did was because it was raining and I was thinking of… _them_. They knew the whole story, how they had been my best friends, how they didn't contact me after they left, how he had very possibly liked me. And most importantly that I realized that I _had_ liked him when he lived in Forks. Now, I didn't know how I felt about him, I didn't know if I liked him because I only realized that I liked him after he left, so I didn't know if or when I stopped liking him, and it scared me. I still wore the locket they gave me, everyday, I only took it off to sleep.

"What's wrong Bella? It's not… _them_ is it?" Jasper asked. They knew how I didn't like to say their names. I sighed and shook my head. Rosalie rubbed my back.

"Well then what is it?" She asked, concerned.

"My mother accepted a job offer for me, I'm going to be away the whole summer." I looked up at them. They looked relieved. That was weird, they should be upset!

"Actually, that might be a good thing Bells," Rosalie said, guilt dripping from her voice, "Jasper and I are going to be away all summer too" She looked at me with a sad smile.

"What? Where are you two going?" I asked them, a little hurt that they didn't tell me sooner.

"We're working at this camp in California. Rose is a counselor and I'm working in the waterfront staff, lifeguard." Jasper said quietly. This perked my attention. A camp? What were the chances we'd all be working at camps this summer.

Wait.

"What's the camp called?" I asked them, my heart rising at the possibilities.

"Camp Pacific Coast" Rosalie said. I squealed and jumped on Rosalie. She started laughing but looked at me with a confused look.

"You guys won't believe this. I'm working at a camp all summer too… the same one!" I said excitedly as Rosalie squealed and hugged me. We were all laughing and excited. Maybe this summer won't be as horrid as I thought it was. If I had my two best friends with me, it would be a good summer right?

We ended up going to the pool anyway, as a celebration of sorts. Rosalie dragged me off sometime after two to go shopping for the summer. That was the only similarity between Rose and _her. _That and they were incredibly beautiful. Rosalie didn't shop for hours and she only shopped when need be. It suited me perfectly. By the time we got back, we each had three new bathing suits, new flip-flops, sunglasses, and outfits for camp.

I walked in the door and smelt something burning. Before I got panicky I heard my mother swear in the kitchen. Dear lord, that woman was trying to cook, _again._ I chuckled as I ran upstairs to put my shopping bags in my room and dropped my pool bag off. I walked down the stairs to find my mother throwing a smoking chicken into the sink, the water running. I doubled over in laughter and Renee looked over at me, a defeated look on her face.

"Why does the cooking gene skip a generation?" She asked with a weak smile playing on her face. It only made me laugh harder. When I calmed down I just shook my head at my mother and reached for the phone. Since the chicken we were supposed to be eating was ruined, I ordered a couple pizzas.

"Mom, why did you try and cook a chicken? Don't you remember what happened last time?" I asked her as she sat down in a chair at the table. The last time she tried to cook a chicken, the oven burst into flames and we lived off frozen dinners until we could get a new oven and stove. I will never understand how it caught fire. She only had it on 350 degrees. That's a completely normal temperature to cook something at. I will never know.

"I don't know… I thought maybe this time I'd get it right and last time was just bad luck" Renee said with a little chuckle. I joined in on the chuckling and hugged my mother from behind, my head resting on hers, my arms lightly around her neck.

"If last time was bad luck, what were all the other times?" I asked her with a laugh. Renee slapped my arm and laughed along with me. My mother was off beat and eccentric, but I loved her the way she was. She could make me laugh whenever I needed it; she was one of my best friends. If there was one thing I loved in this entire world, it was quality time with Renee. How many 17 year old girls can say that she loves being with her mother?

"Oh you be quiet! It's a little embarrassing to have to have your daughter cook every night you know." She said. "Well, either that or have your husband grill something." I smiled and went to go get the door; it just rang signaling that the pizza man was there. It was always interesting to see what kind of pizza person would be delivering. Usually it was some creepy kid who's face looked more like a pizza then the actual pizza did. Sometimes it was an old man, sometimes it was a girl and sometimes, on an off chance, it was a fairly attractive guy. But that rarely happened. I started laughing at a memory of me and Rose from when we were 15….

_It was summer time and I was sleeping over at Rosalie's house. Jasper was at another friend's house. We had decided to order pizza, as Rose said, it was a classic tradition at sleepovers. I was starving; we had been swimming at the local pool all day. I had sunburn and looked like a lobster. Rosalie, looking like a model as always, was perfectly tan, not receiving one burn. Lucky. We were sitting in her room when we heard a car door slam. We instantly knew it was the pizza guy. _

"_Pizza's here!" Rose yelled to her parents while we sat there listening to music. I was nodding my head to the beat and kept surfing the web on her laptop while she straightened her hair while shaking her hips and dancing to the song that was playing; we were going to the movies later. I didn't bother getting too dressed up. Nothing would look or feel good with sunburned skin. Plus, it's not like it really mattered what I wore to the movies. I wasn't trying to impress anyone._

"_I wonder if he's good looking" I mused. I looked over at Rosalie, who's head had just snapped up to meet mine, mirroring my look of shock. "What if it's an old man…or a woman?" We stared at each other for a second._

"_GRAB THE BINOCULARS!" Rosalie yelled as we scrambled, looking for the binoculars she kept in her room. Rose got them and we ran over to the window, almost falling out of the large window, we ran so fast. I looked out the window, frantically looking for the mystery pizza person. We were giggling from the franticness of it all. We could see the pizza guy perfectly without the binoculars of course, but they made it more fun and made it seem like we were in some movie._

"_Awwwwwww DAMN! I guess it was a good thing we didn't try and get the door." Rose said as she turned around. She sighed, and let the binoculars drop to the floor._

"_Why'd it have to be an old man!" I said with a frown. Rosalie shrugged and we went to get some pizza._

**(that actually happened to me and my friend Alex one time, although not the sunburn part. It was really funny, because she wouldn't tell me why she had the binoculars in her room.)**

Still laughing a bit, I opened the door. I tried to bite back my laughter as the old guy handed me the pizza. I handed him the money and closed the door. I burst out in laughter as I walked to the kitchen. I put the pizza in the oven on a very low setting to keep it warm and started working on a salad. Renee had gone upstairs to change into some not-so-smokey clothes. I tossed some romaine and ice berg lettuce into a big glass bowl and went to cutting up the cucumbers. The phone rang while I was washing the cucumbers off. I quickly dried my hands and picked up the phone.

"Hello?"

"Bella! It's dad, how are you?" Charlie's voice filled my ear. I smiled at it; I hadn't talked to my father in a while. Weirdly enough, we were both fairly busy most of the time.

"I'm good dad, how about you?" I asked as I held the phone between my shoulder and my ear so I could cut up the cucumbers.

"I'm good. I was just wondering if I was visiting you this summer or maybe you were going to come visit me instead?" Charlie asked hopefully. I was about to tell him that he was coming here like usual, but then I remembered my job. I put the knife down and took the phone from the crook of my neck

"Actually Ch-Dad, I have a job this summer, so I can't see you" I said sadly. I really did like it when Charlie visited me.

"A job?" he asked incredulously. I was never the one for a job. Yes, I wanted my own money and didn't like it when people paid for me, but every job I thought about getting proved to be dangerous to me in some way. I couldn't waitress in fear of spilling something when I tripped, be a lifeguard because I'd trip or loose my balance in the water somehow. Plus, there weren't many jobs around here. I babysat sometimes though, that was how I kept my money supply up.

"Yeah, mom accepted a job for me. I'm working at a camp in California with Rosalie and Jasper."

"Oh, well that's nice. What camp is it?" Charlie asked intrigued.

"Camp Pacific Coast."

"Hmmm. That's odd, that's where…." He trailed off mumbling something I couldn't quite catch.

"What's odd dad?"

"Oh! Nothing, I was just talking to myself." I accepted that answer and proceeded to cutting carrots and tomatoes for the salad. We talked for a little more before he told me he had to go. He was going to the Black's for dinner. I told him to say hi for me and hung up. Just as I did, Phil came through the front door from practice, he was a baseball player, and Renee came down the stairs.

"Looks good, Bella" Phil commented as he put his bag in the closet. "Pizza? I thought we were having chicken?"

I giggled, "We _were_, but that was before your wife decided to try and cook a chicken on her own" Phil looked from me to Renee to the sink with the black chicken still sitting in it and shook his head chuckling. I pulled the pizza out from the oven, put the box on the table and placed the salad next to it. We all sat down and took a slice of pizza and some salad.

"Hey, mom" I said. She looked up. "I never thanked you for accepting that job for me, thank you." She looked surprised.

"You're thanking me?" Renee asked. I nodded. "I would have thought you would be angry at me and only come out of your room for meals."

I laughed before I answered. "Well, I was planning on doing that, until I talked to Rose and Jasper. They're both working there too, and they didn't tell me until today."

Renee smiled, "That's good! Now I won't have an angry daughter on my case. What a coincidence!"

I laughed and finished my dinner. I excused myself and went to go take a shower. I let the aroma of my favorite strawberry shampoo fill me as I rinsed the pool water from my hair. My mind kept returning to the camp that I was going to be working at. I kept thinking of the sun and beach and all the wonderful things I'd be able to do there. I smiled at the thought. This summer would definitely be interesting.

**A/N: Hmmm… there was a bit of foreshadowing there in that chapter. Although you all probably know what's going to happen because of the summary. Oh well. So please review, it makes me happy. I'll get the next chapter out soon, it's a long one =]**

**~Dancerx11**


	4. The Pacific Coast

**A/N: Hey guys, sorry this took so long. I had a crazy busy week last week and the weekend. I had my last dance class Wednesday, dress rehearsal on Thursday which goes into all hours of the night, then my recital on Friday night, and I didn't get home till 11:30 that night. Then on Saturday morning I had the SAT IIs at 7:45, then I was at Summer Jam (for all of you that don't know what it is, it's this big concert we have and a lot of people come like Flo Rida, Jesse McCartney, 3OH!3, White Tie Affair, and others) and I didn't get home until 9:30. Then I had 4 softball games and had to leave at 8 in the morning for it. Not to mention that my teachers decided to lay a bunch of work on me last week so I didn't have any time to get on. So here the third chapter of Stranger is. I'm hoping to get chapter 4 out sometime later this week.**

**Disclaimer: Once again… Not Stephenie Meyer… sadly…**

Chapter Three

The Pacific Coast

BPOV

Next thing I knew, it was a week later and the three of us were packing up the car. We were driving because Rosalie didn't want to live without her car. Her parents offered to send her car to her while she was at camp but she wanted to drive it there. She didn't trust anyone but herself with her precious red convertible BMW. She sometimes let Jasper drive it, but not usually. She also said it would be a fun experience to drive to California. In other words, she thinks it's fun to be in a car for a little over 6 hours straight is enjoyable. Well, I don't.

"Rose, why can't we fly like normal people?" I asked as I was putting my last suitcase in the trunk. Rosalie just laughed.

"Well, then we'd be just that. Normal. Plus this will be more fun don't you think?" She got into the driver's seat and I slid into the passenger seat. I rolled my eyes. She saw that and smacked my arm laughing. Jasper came out then and stuck his suitcases in and jumped into the back. We waved goodbye to our parents and drove off. Rosalie started blasting music and we started the long trip ahead of us.

We reached the camp in Santa Ana at around three in the afternoon. We left around ten o'clock and Rosalie drives fast, so we got there a little early. Rosalie drove up to the main lodge. She parked the car and we all got out. We walked into the lodge and I took the sunglasses I was wearing off and pulled them up to the top of my head. Inside, it was obviously the office part of the camp. There was a woman sitting behind a desk as we came in, she looked up. She had bright red hair and had big bug glasses on. You know the kind that old ladies wear? Yeah those were the kind.

"Can I help you kids?" The woman asked us. Rosalie walked up to the desk.

"Yes, actually. We're here for the counselor orientation?" The woman looked over Rose's shoulder and over to us. She gave us the once over and asked Rose for our names. "Rosalie Hale, Jasper Hale, and Isabella Swan, please" The woman gave Rosalie some papers and she walked back to us.

"Well, we're to settle down in our cabins and fill out some papers. We have to be at the dining hall by six o'clock though." Rosalie handed us each our papers and cabin assignments. I looked down at mine. I was in Lodge 7, Cabin 4, and I'd be working with two other counselors. On the next papers was extra information I would have to fill out for the camp. I looked up at Rosalie.

"Where are you assigned?" I asked her hoping that she would be in my cabin or at least my lodge.

"Ummmm…" she looked back down at her papers. "Lodge… 7… Cabin… 4" She looked back up at me. I almost screamed I was so excited.

"ROSE! WE'RE IN THE SAME CABIN!" I said smiling like the Cheshire Cat. Jasper was staying in the staff lodge because he wasn't a counselor. We drove the car down to drop our stuff off at our lodges and then Rosalie went to park it in the lot. When she came back we walked back to our lodge with Jasper so he could help us move our luggage.

We walked into the building. When we walked in there was an open space with some couches, chairs, tables, and an air hockey table. To each corner, there was a hallway to each cabin. We dragged our things into Cabin 4 and found the counselor's room. It wasn't much of a room. There was a bunk bed and a single bed. We had a window, but we would have to take showers and go to the bathroom where our campers did. It was perfectly fine with me. Rosalie took the top of the bunk bed; she loved bunk beds. I took the bunk under her, perfectly content with being close to the floor. The other girl hadn't arrived yet, and I was a little anxious to meet her. What if she we just didn't get along? We would be stuck with this person for the entire summer.

I was sitting on my bed reading, having already finished unpacking, when Jasper returned. Rosalie was still unpacking.

"Hey guys. I was just about to go walk around the camp. Do you want to come? There's barely anyone here yet." Jasper said looking around. It was true. It was almost 5:15 and we hadn't heard a sound that would signal the other counselor's arrivals. We agreed to go.

We walked all around the camp. There was a beautiful lake with a large beach. Next to the beach was a gazebo sitting in the shade. At the beach there were all kinds of boats: kayaks, canoes, row boats, sailboats, and motorboats. There was a water trampoline laying out a ways from the shore. There was a rope that allowed you to swing on it and into the lake. It looked like it would be fun when the kids were swimming. There was an arts and crafts lodge with every crafty material you could imagine. There were sports fields with a sophisticated shed to hold all its props. There were fields and a barn for horses, an archery field, a ropes course (which I would be staying off of), and a playhouse for performances. After a little while of walking, Jasper decided to head back to the staff lodge to see if his roomie was there. Rosalie and I kept walking.

We had been walking around for a while and realized that we needed to get to the dining hall. We walked in; there were chairs all around and some people sitting in them. We found Jasper and sat down somewhat in the back and chatted about what we thought of the camp so far. A little while later, our attention was called to the front.

"Excuse me!" A woman with shoulder length, light brown hair was speaking, "My name is Chrissy Copland, and I am the director of this camp. It's our pleasure to welcome each and every one of you, whether you are a rookie counselor or have been here as long as I have" everyone chuckled at that. Chrissy continued her introduction, along with the rules and what exactly was expected of us. After that we had to all stand up and introduce ourselves, our name, where we were from, how old we were, and why we applied or how long we've been here. Chrissy decided to go from the back of the room to the front. It wasn't long before we had to go. Jasper went first.

"Hi, I'm Jasper Hale; I'm from Phoenix, Arizona. I'm 18 years old and I applied here because I needed to get some extra cash before college and I love working with kids." He smiled and sat down. I was next; I took a deep breath and stood up. I could do this… right?

"Hi everyone. Um, I'm Bella Swan and I live in Phoenix. I'm 17 and…" I paused because I didn't actually apply. I was basically forced to go, "…to be honest, I didn't actually apply here myself. One of the women I baby sit for was helping to look for new counselors and suggested me. And apparently I was hired. I guess I accepted because I really love kids and think it would be great to work with them for a summer" I smiled and started to sit down, but Chrissy stopped me.

"Oh yes! I remember you. Val Thompson said that you did wonders with her children when she lived in Phoenix." I blushed; I hated having attention brought to me. "Well, we're glad to have you Bella." She smiled and I sat down. Rosalie stood up after me.

"I'm Rosalie Hale, yes Jasper is my brother. I am from Phoenix, yes the three of us know each other, we're good friends. I'm 17 years old and I applied here because I've always loved kids and can't wait to have some of my own, so working with them now should be a really fun time." She sat down. I didn't completely pay attention to the others who spoke; I hadn't gotten much sleep, until Rosalie nudged me. "Look at that guy! Damn, he's hot!"

I looked up at the guy who had just stood up. He was very large with dark curly hair. He looked like he was a body builder. Totally Rose's type.

"Hey everyone! As a lot of you know, I'm Emmett McCarty. I've worked here as the sports counselor since I was 16. I was a camper for as long as I can remember. I'm 19 and I live in Santa Ana." He sat down and I had to close Rosalie's mouth for her. She looked over at me sheepishly and giggled. I zoned out again until I heard something that I hadn't heard in a long time.

It was a high pitched squeal that I only ever knew one person that was capable of. This was _not_ happening.

"Eeeee! I'm _super_ excited to be back! Well my name is," _please don't be her, please don't be her, please don't be her._ "Alice Cullen." _SHIT! It is her!_ "I work as a counselor here, have been since last year. I, like most counselors, came here all the time as a tween. I live in Sacramento, California, and I'm 17." Why. _Why_. **Why. **_**WHY?!**_Did she have to be here right now? Does God hate me? Yes, that has to be it. Renee didn't take me to church enough as a child and now I'm being punished… but it wasn't my fault!

Wait.

If _she's_ here…

No.

I'm not _that_ unlucky.

Am I?

I looked up and saw a head of tousled bronze hair stand up.

Yes.

I _am_ that unlucky.

Shit.

"Hey, I'm Edward Cullen. Many of you know me as Alice's twin brother. I've worked here as the music guy and went to the camp as long as my sister did. As she does, I live in Sacramento and am 17 years of age." That velvet voice filled my ears and tears filled my eyes, threatening to spill. Rosalie and Jasper had looks of shock on their faces and turned to look at me. Jasper's eyes held empathy, as if he knew how I felt, how hearing their voices brought back the feeling of betrayal, how seeing their faces brought back the loss I felt when they left. Rosalie looked concerned, like she knew I was going to cry, knew how I was going to act. Lucky for me, Chrissy dismissed us soon after that and I all but ran back to the cabin. I closed my door and put my back against it. I was breathing heavily; whether that was from how fast I got here, or from trying not to cry, I didn't know. I crashed down on my bunk and stared at the top.

Really. What were the _odds?_ It's not like I even applied here! It was a suggestion from someone and ended up deciding my fate.

Fate.

Hm.

No, I don't think so. If fate was going to do something for me, it would do something good. But then again, fate hasn't been my friend in the past few years.

Then wouldn't it make sense for fate to bring me the people that I never wanted to see again?

I groaned and sat up. I decided it didn't matter why these coincidences kept happening to me. All that mattered was that I was here right now, and so were _they_. I would have to deal with them for the next three months, and I decided that I was going to deal with them as little as possible. This would work out for us both, because they obviously didn't want me. They would have called. Or sent a letter. Or contacted me somehow. Their silence was the answer to the unspoken question of "Did they want me?"

I looked over at my clock and saw that it was now almost eight and Rosalie wasn't back and neither was the other counselor we were staying with. I decided that I should go back to the dining hall and see if people were still there. I didn't want to answer questions like, "why weren't you there before?" and "Why do you keep avoiding people?" I sighed and walked out of the cabin and returned to the dining hall.

I walked in the hall and found all the counselors chatting away with everyone. I scanned the crowd for Rosalie or Jasper but couldn't find them. I really hoped they didn't go and look for me. I quickly took out my phone and texted them.

**To: Rosalie Fwd: Jasper**

**WHERE ARE YOU GUYS!?**

I put my phone away and started to make my way through the crowd, maybe they were stuck in the middle and I couldn't see them from the outside. I weaved in and out of people as a couple of the guy counselors looked me up and down and then wiggled their eye brows at me. It only made me walk faster. It wasn't until I knocked into someone that I realized I was walking _too_ fast.

"Oh! I'm sorry!" I looked up to see Chrissy smiling at me.

"Oh don't worry dear. So, are you excited to be working here?" she asked, her eyes filled with excitement. Now if she had asked me this question when I first arrived here, the answer would be yes. But because of two of her other employees, I wasn't so sure of my honest answer.

"It's definitely going to be an interesting summer" I said with a smile. That was _not_ a lie. She smiled at me and walked off. I sighed. I really didn't want to be here. I really didn't want to deal with them. I really didn't—

"Bella?" A timid, twinkling voice called from behind me. I froze. "Bells?" They called again. Only two people ever called me that. I slowly turned around, looking at the ground. I took a deep breath and looked ahead of me. In front of me was a girl who looked more like a pixie than a human. Her black hair was spiked out in all directions. And she was even more beautiful than I remembered. I braced myself.

"Alice"

"IT _IS_ YOU!" She squealed as she jumped on me, hugging me tighter than I've ever been hugged before. I was shocked at her forwardness. So shocked that I remained frozen in my spot. She unhooked her arms from around my body and took a step back. Her eyebrows were furrowed in confusion. "Why aren't you hugging back?" she barely whispered.

"I don't know," I said, my voice hard, "why would I want to hug someone who has ignored me for almost six years?" She closed her eyes, looking defeated.

"Bells…" Alice said to me with desperation in her voice, "I am _so_ incredibly sorry. We were just so busy and everything. I meant to call you back, I _really _did. It just—"

"Slipped your mind?" I finished for her, speaking through my teeth. If I was upset before, I was furious now. How dare she think I would forgive her so quickly? How dare she think she could hug me and it'd all be good again? Does she really think so little of me?

"Yeah" she sighed, a sad look forming on her face.

"Makes sense… best friends do that don't they? Slip your mind. It's fairly common isn't it? Oh yeah, I mean they're not important are they? Why should they stay on your mind? They're really more like toys. You know, you play with them for a bit then leave them there to sit on the shelf. Waiting for you to come and get them and play with them like you used to. After they sit a while, collecting dust, they realize what's really happening. You didn't just put them away because you had to go to bed last time. You had new toys. Toys you wanted to play with more. Toys you decided were more important than them." I glared at her, trying harder than I have ever tried not to lose my temper. It was more difficult than I would have imagined.

Alice took a deep breath and looked at me with the biggest eyes I've seen. It didn't faze me. "Bella you know that's not true. You _are _important. You didn't deserve it. _I_ deserved that. All of that. But all I can say is I'm sorry."

"Sorry doesn't make up for the days when I'd run home from school wondering if you'd called. Sorry doesn't make up for the fact that I moved to Phoenix with my mother just to get away from the place that reminded me of the friends that lied to me. Sorry doesn't make up for the money I spent calling Charlie wondering if you had called there looking for me. Sorry doesn't make up for the fact that you never wanted me, that you never even liked me, that you never _cared_—"

"_Stop._" Alice's voice was so fierce that I had no choice but to stop. She looked like she was on the verge of tears. "Don't you for _one_ second accuse me of never _caring_ about you. About never wanting you to be my friend. About never _liking_ you. What did you think we did all those years then? Just messed with your head? Spent all our time around you because we didn't _like_ you? That my tears _all_ the way to Sacramento and for days after were because I didn't _care_ for you? Come on Bells, we're best friends"

She took a couple deep breaths to steady herself and trying to stop the tears from running down her face.

"Actually, Alice. I already _have_ a best friend. And _she_ hasn't lied to me" She looked as though I had just slapped her in the face. Which, I basically just verbally did. I took this opportunity to leave. I started walking back towards my lodge. I knew she couldn't follow me into my room unless I invited her. If I got all the way to my room and closed the door, I knew she'd go away. I knew her well enough to know that.

I was approaching the lodge when I heard the footsteps behind me.

"Bella, I know I was a bad friend by not calling you." I walked into the lodge and toward my cabin. She was still following me.

"Can you stop following me?" I asked her harsher than I had planned. Oh well.

"I am _not_ following you" She said. I scoffed at her. What did she think I was? Dumb?

"Alice, I may never have had perfect grades like you, but I'm smart enough to know when someone's following me into my own cabin"

"Uh, Bells, hun. You're walking into _my_ cabin" Alice said matter-of-factly. It took a minute for it to click in my head. My mouth dropped. _She _was the other counselor in my cabin.

"_You?!_" I said incredulously.

This _couldn't _be happening to me.

Wait.

Yes, it very well could.

She was already at the camp I was working at.

I would already have to see her all summer.

Why not put the cherry on the top?

"Ughhhhhhhhh!" I groaned and flopped down on my bed. Alice sighed and sat down on her single bed. She crossed her legs and looked back up at me.

"Bella." She called. I didn't look up. "Can you _please_ look at me?" I heard the plea in her voice and couldn't ignore it. I took a deep breath and looked up.

"Look, I know sorry doesn't fix it. It doesn't even start to fix it. I can understand why you're mad and I can understand why you stopped calling. And I hate to say it, but there were a couple times when I was going to call you, but I stopped myself. I thought you hated me. I knew that I hadn't talked to you in forever, and I thought that if you hadn't given up on me, then you would have called, or was going to call sometime. I was too scared to call you. I was scared of your rejection." I looked at her like she was crazy. I mean I'd be kind of mad, but did she really think I wouldn't even talk to her if she called me on the phone? It would have been a lot better than this situation.

"I was chicken. And I know that doesn't help anything and it doesn't justify what I didn't do. I mean, you called countless times, no matter what you were feeling. And what you were feeling must have been ten times worse than what I was feeling. I was so excited when I saw you stand up earlier tonight. I thought I would never see you again, and here you are. All I can do is hope you'll forgive me and let me work towards making it up to you."

I thought about it. I missed Alice terribly all this time. She was my best friend when I was younger. And her apology sounded sincere. But who's to say that it won't happen again when we leave this summer? How do I know she won't ignore me for another 6 years or until we run into each other again?

"If I forgive you, how do I know that you won't just leave at the end of the summer and then not contact me?"

Alice looked at me pointedly.

"Bells. I just found you again. I'm not letting you out of my world this time" She smiled and surprisingly, I smiled back. "So… do you forgive me?" she asked and her smile fell. I got up and walked over to her, a mask of mock anger on my face. I looked her up and down, sighed and rolled my eyes. She looked down, believing that I didn't forgive her. I tackled her onto her bed.

"Of course I forgive you Ali!" I said, using my old nickname for her while giggling. Alice started laughing too and hugged me, if it was possible, harder than before. "But I don't forgive…" I hesitated on his name, "your brother yet."

"Oh, I totally understand. I don't know what his deal is." I laughed at that.

Alice and I sat there talking for a while before I felt my phone vibrate. I picked it up and put it to my ear.

"Hello?"

"ISABELLA MARIE SWAN WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU!?" I pulled the phone away from my ear as more yelling and profanities were shouted at me from Rosalie. Uh-oh, she was pissed. Alice first looked at the phone as if it had been possessed then, unless I was wrong, it looked like she was impressed.

"Rosalie… Rosalie…."

"YOU HAVE ME AND JASPER LOOKING ALL OVER THIS CAMP THINKING YOU HAD BEEN YOURSELF AND GOTTEN STUCK AT THE BOTTOM OF THE LAKE!"

"Ro-sa-lie" I said slowly, trying to get her attention

"WE WERE GOING TO CALL CHRISSY OVER HERE WE WERE SO WORRIED. THEN WE THINK, 'LET'S GO BACK TO THE CABIN SHE MIGHT BE THERE' BUT NO YOU WEREN'T. THEN WE THINK 'WELL MAYBE SHE'S BACK AT THE DINING HALL' BUT NO YOU WEREN'T AND NEITHER WAS ALICE. THEN WE GOT NERVOUS THINKING YOU HAD LET YOUR TEMPER GET THE BETTER OF YOU AND YOU CUT HER FOOT OFF OR SOMET—"

"ROSALIE!" I finally yelled into the phone. She stopped. Finally! "I'm back at the cabin and I will explain everything to you when you get here." I hung up the phone. I knew if I didn't, she'd yell at me more. Not that she wasn't going to anyway.

I looked back at Alice. She had a smile on her face.

"I like her." Alice said. I looked at her. How could she like Rose already? She hadn't even met her?

"What?"

"She knows how to handle you, knows just as much about you as I do, knows that if you got mad enough, you might just cut someone's foot off" I was about to say something when she looked at me, knowing that I knew that that was true. "And by her bunk space, she has good style" I started laughing at that. Alice would care about someone's style sense, and she would be able to tell it just from their bunk space.

It wasn't long before Rosalie came bursting through the door, still angry at me. I smiled sheepishly.

"Don't you smile at me Isabella Swan. You are in major trouble." I hung my head. Yep, it wouldn't be easy to get out of this one. "First of all, where were you?"

"Ummm, first I came here, then after a little while; I went back to the dining hall looking for you."

"Wait looking for me? Why didn't you text me or call me?" Rosalie asked, exasperated.

"I _did_! I texted you and Jasper asking you where _you_ were" I told her, confused as why she didn't know this. I never got an answer to my text.

"Oh, I didn't get it. And I guess Jasper didn't either." Rosalie looked down and sighed. "Okay, next question. Why the hell is _she_ in our room?" Right. Rose was still angry at Alice for all she did to me.

"Um, Rose. She's the other counselor." I said quietly. Rose's face froze and she had a look of fury on her face. One of the things I love about Rosalie is that she won't let anyone push her friends around or be rude to them. If someone doesn't treat her friends or family with absolute respect, she got pissed.

"Of all the people we could have been stuck with. We're stuck with _her_?" Rose spat angrily as she walked over to climb onto her bed. Alice just looked down and stayed quiet. That was probably the only time someone has said something like that about Alice and I've seen her keep her mouth shut.

"Rose, it's not that bad" I said, trying to calm her down.

"Not that bad? _Not that bad?_ Bella, this girl is one of the reasons you don't come out of the house on a rainy day. This is the girl that promised to stay in touch with you, and broke that promise. This is the girl whose name you couldn't say aloud. This is the girl who made you cry. And you don't think it's _bad_ that we have to not only work at the same camp as her this whole summer, but we have to share a room with her? Come on Bella, I know you better than that." I looked over at Alice who looked like she was about to cry. I walked over to her and she got up.

"I'm sorry Bella. I'll go talk to Chrissy to see if I can change cabins. I didn't mean to be a burden." Alice said in a quiet voice as she started to walk out the door. I ran after her.

"Alice!" she stopped and turned around with tears streaming down her face. I felt awful. This was all my fault. If I hadn't complained to Rosalie and Jasper so much about what happened, they wouldn't be angry at Alice. "Wait, I never said I wanted you to switch cabins. Rosalie is just really protective. I told them about what happened when you moved and it really got her mad. I haven't had a chance to explain to her yet that I'm not mad at you anymore. So just wait, let me try and calm her down"

"No Bella. You don't have to do that. I deserve this." Alice said as she turned away. I grabbed her arm.

"Oh no you don't missy. I want to do this. Alice, I'm tired of being angry at you, and I told you I forgive you. Rosalie will come around, I promise."

After convincing Alice to stay in the common room until I talked to Rose, I walked back into the cabin and into our room. I was pissed to say the least. I mean I know she was being protective and everything, but really. She didn't have to say those things with Alice right there. And she didn't even give me a chance to explain.

"Rosalie Lillian Hale" I growled as I walked into the room. Rose looked up at me like I was crazy.

"What'd I do?"

"How could you say that _right in front of Alice!_ You didn't even give me a chance to explain why I'm not angry!" Rosalie looked taken aback. She sighed and looked me straight in the eye and nodded for me to continue. "I talked to her back at the dining hall. I was pissed at her, I really was. Then we started talking about what happened. Basically they were really busy after the move and just didn't get a chance to call me back. She was going to call me, but she was scared that I would be angry. She understands why I was angry at her and didn't want to talk to her. She understood if I never forgave her. That she deserved everything that I said to her. And I bitched her out. I forgave her. So please, for me, give her a chance."

Rose sat there on her bed. I could tell it was hard for her to try and understand why I was forgiving Alice. Rosalie had seen my pain and watched me cry on those rainy days. She had been there for me when I remembered them. She had been patient with me when I tried to tell her about what happened; it had taken a while because I couldn't get the words out.

She sighed, "Fine. I'll give her a chance. But if she hurts you in any way Bella. I swear. She will be on my black list forever. But, what about… _him_?"

Now it was my turn to sigh, "I don't know Rose. I haven't talked to him and to tell the truth. I don't really know if I want to. Alice says she has no idea why he never talked to me so, I don't know."

"I think it's because he changed. And he wanted to forget you." A twinkling voice came from the doorway. Alice gave a small smile before entering. "Bells. I know he liked you, I know that for a fact. I think it was harder on him than he let on when we left, and he wanted to forget you, to numb the pain. But that's just what I saw." She looked hesitantly at Rose. Rosalie just sat there, scrutinizing her with her eyes.

"What do you mean he's changed?" Rose asked her, partly intrigued, partly seeing if Alice was being truthful.

"Well, I guess it'd be hard to explain it to you Rosalie. I mean you didn't know him. But Bella," She turned to look at me. She gave me the saddest eyes I've ever seen. "You'll see it when you see more of him. He's not exactly the sweet boy you remember. Or the same brother I remember" This confused me. What did she mean he wasn't the _sweet boy_ I remembered? How could he have changed? I played with my locket, remembering the day he gave it to me.

"Alice what do you mean?" I asked her. She sighed.

"I can't explain it. You'll see for yourself tomorrow." She turned to Rosalie. "I really am sorry for everything. I will spend the whole summer making it up to Bella and proving to you that I'm worthy to be her friend"

"Alice you don't have to get Rosalie's approval" I told her. That was ridiculous. She shouldn't have to be friends with my friends.

"But I want her approval Bella. I really do. I won't feel right until I do. If someone who didn't even know me doesn't like me from what I did, I can only imagine what you actually went through. I need this"

Rosalie got down from her bunk and went to stand in front of Alice. She looked her up and down and stopped at her shoes. She looked at her skeptically before saying anything.

"Are those _real_ Marc by Marc Jacobs sandals?" Rosalie asked her as if it were deciding her fate.

"Of _course_ they're real! What did you expect me to wear? Knock offs?" Alice asked as if she had just insulted her. Rosalie looked her up and down again. Then she smiled and Alice smiled back.

"I think I could get used to having you around, pixie"

**A/N: So, they're baaaaaaaaaaack. Hehe. So, some people may not like that Bella forgave Alice so quickly but hey, it's Alice remember? And I know that it's kind of odd for Rosalie not to like Alice instead of Bella, like in the series, but it is in Rose's character to stand up for the people she loves and that would be Bella, and she doesn't know Alice too well right now. But don't worry, it won't last for long. ******** So please review!**

**~Dancerx11**


	5. Splish Splash I was Having a Blast

**A/N: Hey guys. Sorry, I know I said that I was going to get this chapter out much earlier but I had a really hectic week and weekend. See last weekend I had a softball tournament. We lost every game. But there were two games we should have won. You see in the first game, we got completely screwed over by the ump, there was a play at first when we were in the field and the ball was hit to the shortstop and they threw to first. The runner was clearly out… but not according to the ump. Then when we were batting, this girl Becca slid into 2****nd**** base and was clearly safe… but not according to the ump. Then, finally, I was running home to tie the game and I slid. I was clearly safe… but not according to the ump. You see I slid under the tag but the catcher just decided to hold the ball over my body instead of actually touching me. The umpire didn't even notice. I was called out. My coach (the calmest person I have ever met) had to take a walk so he wouldn't get kicked out because he was so mad at that play. So I wasn't exactly in the mood to finish the chapter. But I have finished it! So please read =] **

**Disclaimer: I am not Stephenie Meyer… sadly…**

Chapter 4

Splish Splash I was Having a Blast

BPOV

The next morning I woke up to music blaring. I opened my eyes to find Rosalie and Alice jumping around and dancing to _I Hate This Part_ by The Pussycat Dolls. They were both in pajamas and singing at the top of their lungs.

"I CAN'T TAKE IT ANY LONGER"

"THOUGHT THAT WE WERE STRONGER"

"ALL WE DO IS LINGER"

"SLIPPING THROUGH MY FINGERS"

They sang the song together, laughing and acting like best friends. I sat up and just watched them, completely oblivious to the fact that I was awake and watching their every move. I think that somehow, some way, they settled their differences this morning before I woke up. That made me happy. Rosalie and Alice seemed like they could be such good friends, it would be such a shame if Rosalie let the differences between me and Alice in the past get in the way of that relationship. I knew that they could be good friends when Alice said she liked Rosalie just by hearing her yell at me. When Alice liked someone without meeting them, it was a good sign, because from what I remember, she didn't just let anyone be her friend.

"BUT I GOTTA DO IT!"

"I HATE THIS PART!"

"I GOTTA DO IT! I GOTTA GO IT! I GOTTA TO ITTTTTTTTTTTT!" They started laughing hysterically at the end of the song and I started laughing with them. It was then that they realized that I was awake and watching them.

"uhh… hi Bells" Alice said a little out of breath from the dance party. I giggled.

"Not that I didn't absolutely _love_ that wake up call, but since when are the two of you on such good terms?"

Rosalie and Alice looked at each other and smiled.

"Well, I woke up this morning…" Rosalie started

_(Flashback RPOV)_

_I opened my eyes to the bright sunlight shining through the windows of the cabin. I checked the clock. 7:15. We had to be at breakfast at nine so I decided to just start getting ready. I looked over the bunk and Alice was already up, sitting on her bed, flipping through what looked like a photo album. I figured that it was probably of her snooty little friends back in precious "Sacramento". She was probably missing them more than she ever missed Bella. I mean it looked seriously decorated, like someone had put a lot of thought into it. They probably put it together for her who knows how long ago, for when she went away. So that she didn't forget her sweet "Emily" or "Brittany" or "Kristie" or whatever the heck their names were. They were probably generic. Just like their personalities probably were. I rolled my eyes and climbed out of my bunk. I went out to brush my teeth at the sink, leaving Alice to her pictures. _

_I still didn't understand exactly why Bella forgave her so fast. I mean it's not like Alice actually proved anything! Just a few words said, no one but them around, she could probably pretend they never happened at the end of the summer when she decided to screw Bella over again. But, then again, Bella was more forgiving than your average person. I hoped she didn't forgive _him_ as easily. I mean _someone_ had to be punished, in my opinion. I finished brushing my teeth and went to go back to our room when I heard Alice talking to someone._

"_Oh Bella," She said sadly, "why did it have to go so wrong?" She sighed and flipped the page. I waited for Bella's response, checking to see if she was actually talking to Bella. I heard nothing. I walked back into the room, curious now._

"_What are you looking at?" I asked innocently, and to be honest, I was curious now that she was talking about Bella. Why would Bella be apart of her perky little friend book? "I don't mean to pry" Yes, yes I did._

"_Oh." Alice looked down at the album and smiled sweetly. "It's a photo album from when I lived in Forks with Bella. I put it together with my mom when we moved to Sacramento. It made it easier to be away from her. My mom loves taking pictures, so there were plenty to choose from in the two and a half years we were there."_

_I looked down at the photo album and sure enough, in the picture was 10 year old Alice and Bella in a plastic pool with goofy grins on their faces. On the next one was one of Alice putting bows in Bella's hair, Bella with a pout on her face. Same old Bella. On the next page was a picture of Alice, Bella and _him_. They were laughing with big huge smiles and popsicle stains around their mouths, this had to be from fourth grade._

"_Wow. And you brought it to camp with you?" I asked her skeptically. It's not like she knew Bella was going to be here, so why would she bring a photo album of them to camp with her?_

"_I take it whenever I'm away from home." Alice said as she flipped the page to new pictures._

"_How often do you look at this?" I asked her. She sighed and looked up at me, smiling sheepishly._

"_Every night since I moved. It was the best part of my childhood and I didn't want it to end" She frowned at the end. And that's what did it. This photo album was all I needed to see. Alice had missed Bella like crazy. I still didn't really like the fact that she decided not to contact Bella, but I guess that was just something she had to do, or whatever. I sat down next to her on the bed looking at the pictures with Alice. I had seen a lot of Bella's pictures from her childhood but never these; I guess Alice's mother never sent her any. I looked through the pictures and whenever one caught my attention, I asked Alice about it. Soon enough, we were laughing at her stories and crazy little things that happened and that they did. Alice was explaining to me a picture of Alice with her mouth wide open, trying to look passionate, and Bella sitting in the background looking bored._

"_I was singing" Alice said with a laugh, "I was obsessed with this one song and wouldn't stop singing it. Bella hated it every time I sang it and it was quite often that I did. My mom got a picture of me singing one time and Bella just happened to be in it. I remember laughing with her when she realized why Bella was so annoyed." Alice was giggling and it was contagious. That's when I remembered that I too sang a song a lot that Bella got annoyed by. I told Alice that there was a song and went to put it on._

"_Oh. My. GOD!" Alice yelled excitedly. "I LOVE THIS SONG!"_

_It was "I Hate This Part" by the Pussycat Dolls. Next thing I knew we were singing along and dancing together to the song._

_(End Flashback)_

BPOV

"Wow. You really have an album from Forks, Alice?" I asked her. She smiled, nodded and handed it to me. I looked through it, remembering each story behind the pictures. I laughed when I saw some and felt sad when I saw others. I couldn't believe that Alice looked at this every single night! I wonder if she ever had _him_ look at it with her. _He_ was in it quite a few times.

At nine o'clock we all headed to the dining hall together for breakfast. We grabbed plates and went to the buffet. I got pancakes with whipped cream and some bacon. It looked delicious and boy was I hungry. We sat down at a table and dug into our food. When I was done I brought my plate and cup up to the dirty dishes table and placed them there. Phew! I didn't trip with the plates. I smiled at that. I went to turn around when, BAM, I knocked into someone.

"Oh!" I said as I stepped back and my heart dropped. I was looking into the face of someone who had emerald green eyes and copper hair. My eyes widened for a second with recognition then returned to normal. I realized I had stopped breathing for a second. I quickly sucked in a small breath and mumbled a quick "sorry" before walking quickly back to the table. I sat down with Alice and Rosalie and they looked at me weirdly.

"I… uh… just bumped into _him_." I said in a low voice. Rosalie's mouth formed an "o" and she nodded in understanding. Alice just sighed and closed her eyes, shaking her head.

"That boy…" I heard her mumble. Then she got up and walked over to him, perky as ever. I didn't quite understand what was going on, but I decided to forget about it. As much as I tried, I couldn't put his face to the back of my mind like I had been able to for the past 6 years. Maybe it was because the last time I saw his face, it was a boy's face, and being so much older than the mental picture of the boy, it didn't effect me. Well, this grown up version of that mental picture _definitely _affected me.

After breakfast, Chrissy had everyone come on a tour of the camp. Rosalie and I already sort of knew where things were, but it was nice to be with Alice, who told us funny stories along the way. It was nice to hear about her life since she moved. It was nice to know that because she missed me, she didn't really have any best friends. And that she wanted to remember me as much as possible. Alice warned me and Rosalie about these two girls, Jessica and Lauren, who were apparently whores.

"I just don't understand why they are always asked to come back. I mean it's not like their good counselors. I had to work with them last year, they made me do _everything._ At first they got all the credit, but then people started to realize that it was all me. I just don't get it." Alice said, frustrated.

"That's weird. Maybe they'll get fired during the summer." I said hopefully, looking over at the girls Alice pointed out. Lauren had died blonde hair, her roots showing her brunette color. She was wearing a very low cut light blue spaghetti strap shirt with white short shorts and flip flops. She had bright pink lip gloss on and _way_ too much eye make up. Jessica was a curly brunette and was wearing a pink halter with jean capris. She was chewing gum—I mean smacking her gum, and had on big bug sunglasses. They definitely looked like California girls.

"Oh, I hope so. I'm just glad I didn't get stuck in the same cabin as them." She said as she smiled at me. I smiled back and then scanned the crowd of counselors. I didn't recognize anyone until I saw a pair of bright green eyes. And they weren't Alice's. They were looking straight into mine, and I looked away. I knew those eyes.

All throughout the tour, the eyes followed me, watched me. It made me self conscious at first but, if he wanted something to do with me, he was going to have to come over here himself.

After the tour we returned to the dining hall for lunch. I got a grilled cheese sandwich with some chips and sat down with Alice and Rosalie at the table. We were talking about what we hoped our campers would be like when Alice left to go to the bathroom. Just as she walked out, we saw Jasper walking over to our table with the large guy from last night.

"Hey guys. This is Emmett, the sports counselor. I was hanging out with him during the tour." Jasper said as he introduced Emmett. Emmett looked even bigger up close. He smiled a very large grin and I thought Rosalie was going to faint. I stifled my laugh, and looked back up at Emmett.

"Emmett, this is my sister Rosalie, and our best friend Bella Swan" Jasper said as he motioned to his frozen sister and me. I noticed as Rose's mouth was practically wide open, Emmett waggled his eyebrows at her. I stuck out my hand to shake his, being polite.

"It's nice to meet you Emmett" I said with a smile. Emmett just looked at my hand, then at my face, then back to my hand. Next thing I knew I wasn't in a handshake like I had planned, but a bear hug.

"It's nice to meet you too Bella." Emmett said and I could hear the smile in his voice. I laughed a bit, but couldn't too much because he was kind of crushing my ribcage.

"Just a thought, Emmett, but… why are you hugging me?" His body shook with laughter.

"Bella, Bella, Bella. Friends don't shake hands, friends HUG!" Now, that really made me laugh, but it kind of hurt because of the massive arms crushing my body.

"Um… Emmett?" I said with a partially raspy voice.

"Yeah" He said, a smile still in his voice.

"I… uh… can't breathe"

"OH!" He said as he let me down with a thud. I took in a deep breath and started laughing again. I really liked Emmett. He seemed kind of like the big brother I never had, and to be truthful, never wanted. I could tell we would be good friends. He and Jasper went to go get their food and as they did, Alice came skipping back to the table. She smiled and sat down. We told her about how Emmett and Jasper were going to sit with us and we explained how Jasper was Rosalie's brother, she couldn't wait to meet him since Alice already knew Emmett from previous years at the camp.

"Oh, Emmett's a crack up" Alice said with a laugh. "He's the one person who I think can actually some-what come close to my amazingness. You see, when we were campers together we would constantly prank each other's cabin, except we would help each other. So I would always know what was going to happen when he pranked my cabin, and he knew what was going to go down with my prank. Except for one time when my cabin pranked his and I didn't tell him. The end product was not fun."

"What happened?" I asked, intrigued.

"Well, you know how there's about five feet in between the doors leading to two of the cabins? And how the doors face each other?" Rose and I both nodded, "Well, one night we got up at like 3 AM and snuck over to their cabin. We took all of the cushions off of the couches and chairs and stacked them up in between the doors to his cabin and the cabin next to his, so that when they opened the door in the morning, they'd hit the cushions and wouldn't be able to get out. Then we took the bare furniture and tipped it over. And when some of us were doing all of that, the others were taking all of their shoes from the common room and tying them together, but they were mismatching them first. Then they threw the pairs of shoes all over outside the lodge and up in trees and everything. The final touch, which in the end was how Emmett knew it was me, was that we left a little poem for them. It said, 'Pranking, pranking is only fun, when you don't tell anyone. So, when you were sleeping, we decided to play. Good luck finding your shoes today'"

"Oh, that's good. What did Emmett do?" Rosalie asked.

"Well, it wasn't fun. At all." Alice looked over to where Emmett was in the line darkly. "Some of the guys in his cabin stole our towels while we were swimming and put paint in them so that when we opened them, we'd get paint all over ourselves. It was awful, I was wearing a designer bathing suit that was ruined." Rosalie gasped and looked horrified. I had to admit, that really sucked. That was worse then what her cabin did.

"Yeah, and that's not all" Alice continued, "while they were doing that, Emmett and some of the other campers snuck into our actual cabin, and stole all our sheets and painted 'Gotcha!' on it, ruining those too. It was horrible. None of us had any sheets for another two days until a counselor had a day off to buy us some more." Rosalie and I had looks of shock on our faces. That was just a mean thing to do, I mean Alice's cabin didn't actually damage anything of theirs; they just made them a little late.

Emmett and Jasper then started to come back. That's when something very odd began. Alice and Jasper locked eyes and glazed over. Jasper just froze, and Alice stopped mid-sentence and was speechless. Jasper walked over to Alice and just stood there.

"You've kept me waiting a long time" Alice said, dreamily. **(A/N: Sorry if this is wrong! I don't have Eclipse on me!)**

"I'm sorry ma'am." Jasper said as he stared into her eyes. This was very odd; I had never seen Jasper act like that, and from Rose's face, neither had she. We exchanged confused looks and shrugged. That's when Emmett interrupted.

"PIXIE! Long time no see, eh?" Emmett said happily and snapped Alice out of her trance. She looked up and smiled hugely.

"Nope! You never came up to visit like you promised you oaf!" Alice said as she walked over to give him a hug. He lifted her off the floor just has he had done with me, but you could see that Alice was used to it. She laughed as she went back to her seat next to Jasper and started eating. Rosalie was looking at Emmett with a perplexed expression, like she didn't know whether to love him because he was gorgeous or hate him because of what he did to Alice's clothes as a prank. With Rosalie, clothes were pretty important. As lunch went on, Rose and I were warming up to Emmett pretty quickly. He was just so loveable. He had even come up with a nickname for me, "Squirt". It wasn't that I didn't like it, but I'm not _that_ small. Jasper and Alice seemed to be connecting pretty well as well. They didn't talk to anyone else but each other for the most part of lunch, only talking to us when addressed or if they heard something that particularly sparked their interest. I, for one, thought it was adorable. After lunch was over we were to change into bathing suits for the swim test, which Jasper was supposed to administer. The girls and I went back to our cabins to change.

"Bella, I got your bathing suit in my bag" Rosalie said as she was digging through her clothes. I gave her a perplexed look.

"Rose, I already unpacked my suits. You didn't have one of mine. You're not the same size as I am" Rosalie just chuckled.

"Bell, I know I'm not the same size as you. I bought you this bathing suit when we went shopping before we came." She smiled and I glared at her. She threw the suit at me and I went to change. I knew enough about Rosalie to know that I was going to wear the suit whether I liked it or not. She would find someway to make me want to wear it or possibly force it on me. "Oh come on. _He_ will be there and you want to make him drool right?"

"I do?"

"Absolutely!" Alice squeaked. "Trust me, you want him to notice you, but not be able to touch." I had no idea what she meant but I knew her well enough to know that she usually knew what she was talking about even when I didn't. I went into the bathroom to change. The bathing suit was actually very cute. It was light blue with darker blue zig-zags and slashes of a darker blue and white. It was a halter top. The bottoms were like regular bottoms but the sides were held together by silver squares along with the top. It actually looked nice on me. I walked out with my jean shorts and a light blue cami over it. After Alice and Rosalie changed, we grabbed our towels and walked over to the lake to meet everyone. Alice's bathing suit was a yellow one with pink Hawaiian flowers on it. The sides of the bottoms and the middle of the top were held together with a gold ring. Rosalie's was black and white and the bottoms had a thick black strip at the top and the sides had fabric hanging down the side. The top was held together with a black ring. They both looked gorgeous and I felt completely insignificant next to them.

I was taking the blue cami and jean shorts I was wearing off when I noticed two things. One was that a head of tousled bronze hair and emerald eyes was staring at me as I took off my shorts and shirt. The second was that my heart rate picked up when I noticed the first. Why should I be self conscious? I felt the heat rise in my cheeks as I lay my clothes next to my towel lying next to Rosalie's. After I threw my hair up into a ponytail, I looked up at Rose and Alice and we walked down to the beach. Jasper was standing there waiting for all the counselors.

"Alright guys. I know that you can all probably swim well enough to be able to swim when your campers are, but by law I've got to do this," Jasper said. He paused and took his sunglasses off and placed them on top of his head as he looked around. He let out a breath. "What I'm going to have you guys do is to swim the width of the third section four times. That's twice back and forth. Depending on what I think of your swimming, I'm going to give you a bracelet. Green means that you can't go past the first section in the water. Yellow means you can go into the second section, red means you can go into the third section and blue means you can go off onto the water trampoline with the campers. You can go into any section under the section you have been allowed in. For example, if you have a red bracelet you can go into section three, two and one, but you can't go to the water trampoline. It's pretty straight forward. I have complete confidence that everyone can get a blue bracelet. Now in groups of five, come down for your test. Once everyone has been through and gotten their bracelets, anyone can swim according to their bracelets."

Jasper finished and walked out onto the deck to wait for the first group to go. Alice, Rose and I met up with Emmett to wait for our turn to take the swim test. I wasn't nervous about the swim test, I was a strong swimmer. We were the second group to go, but there were only four of us in this group. That meant we needed another body. My heart dropped as I saw _him_ running towards us, taking his shirt off in the process. _Do not look, Bella. Do not look. Do you hear me?_ I thought to myself. I turned around and stood with Alice and Rosalie. Together the three of us ran in leaving Emmett and _him_ behind.

Jasper gave us the okay to start, seeing as he already knew who each of us were. He knew _him_ because of me, obviously. I started swimming across the section and reached it quickly. It was when I was on my way back that I had an incentive to move faster. A head of reddish brown hair was swimming quickly next to me. Wanting to be as far away from him as possible, I sped up. Everytime I saw _him_ tailing me, I would speed up a little until I was finally done with the test. I was the first one done.

"Congrats, Bell. Blue bracelet," Jasper said with a smile as he wrote my name down.

"Thanks, Jazz" I said with a laugh as I walked over to the table to get my bracelet. Just as Chrissy was snapping on my snazzy blue bracelet I saw _him_ coming towards me out of the corner of my eye. I whipped my head around and walked back to my towel to dry off a bit. I sat down, waiting for Rosalie, Alice and Emmett to finish. That's when I heard a velvet voice not two feet away from me.

"Hey, B-" It was cut off by a girl yelling _his_ name.

"EDDIE!" A yell came from across the beach. "Edward! Over here!" I heard a sigh and footsteps walking away. I let out the breath I didn't know I was holding. I shook my head and tried to clear my mind. Rose, Emmett and Alice then came over, all with blue bracelets. They sat down with me and we started talking.

We were sitting at our towels when we heard shrieking.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN I'M ONLY GETTING A GREEN BRACELET?" A shrill voice yelled at Jasper. Jasper looked confused and possibly a little frightened. We walked over to see what was going on. Lauren was the one yelling at Jasper in her itsy bitsy teeny weeny hot pink string bikini with her arms thrown down at her sides, sunglasses on top of her bleached blonde hair and outrage on her face.

"You refuse to take the test, so I can't let you swim any farther than the first section." Jasper said with a calm voice. The voice of reason, as always.

"But! This is a _designer_ bathing suit!" Alice coughed a laugh. Not a designer suit I'm guessing.

"And _Edward_" I cringed at the name "got a blue bracelet!" Lauren yelled. Jasper's face only got more confused.

"And…?"

"I have to swim in the same section as him!" I almost burst out in laughter. This girl was ridiculous.

Jasper sighed, "I'm sorry, Lauren. You're getting a green bracelet, unless you decide to take the test. That's final"

"EDDIEKINS!" Lauren screeched as she stalked off of the dock. We all burst out in laughter as we saw Jasper with a bewildered look on his face while chuckling and shaking his head. He took a deep breath, shook his head again and returned to the test takers. Not after long, it was time for free swim, so of course, Alice, Rose, Emmett and I all ran into the water. We ran into section two, because we wanted to be able to stand a little bit. Rosalie and Alice stood by the edge of the dock at the section.

I walked up behind them really quietly and said quietly, "Boo!"

They yelped and jumped up, only to have the dock move. They went crashing into the water. I started laughing hysterically. They resurfaced and glared at me for a moment then started laughing themselves. That's when I felt myself being picked up.

I turned my head to see Emmett's face staring into mine with an evil grin on his face.

"Emmett… why are you grinning like that?" I said carefully. His evilly grin only grew wider.

"Why I do not know what you are talking about dear Squirt" Emmett said as he blinked his eyes multiple times, feigning innocence badly. I glared at him for a moment before,

"CANNONBALL!"

Next thing I knew Emmett had jumped off of the dock and into the water. I quickly took a breath and closed my eyes as the water swallowed me. I kicked Emmett jokingly in the chest as I swam upward. I surfaced just a moment before Emmett.

"What was that little pansy kick for, Bell?" Emmett asked when he came up.

"For jumping in with me! And it was a weak kick because I knew that if I knocked the wind out of you and you went unconscious I wouldn't be able to lug your huge body back up to the surface. Then Jasper would be mad at me because he'd have to save you because I made a stupid mistake. You got off easy big guy" I said as I gave him the evil eye.

"Yeah, you're lucky she didn't put full force into that kick. It is _not_ fun to be on the receiving end of one of those. And an angry Jasper isn't fun to deal with either" Rosalie commented.

Emmett just started laughing. I looked at Rosalie and we both, silently, decided to splash Emmett. We sent a wave of water his way, and his face was completely priceless. Now it was my and Rose's turn to laugh, that is, until we saw his face. He looked at us, water dripping down his face, completely innocent. We looked at each other again, wondering if we should believe it or run for our lives. I was betting on running for my life. I looked back at Emmett's face.

Yep. Definitely running for my life.

In water so high, I can barely stand.

With a huge teddy bear chasing after me.

Crap.

Next thing I knew it was a full fledged splash war. It was me and Rosalie against Alice and Emmett. Jasper eventually jumped in on my and Rose's side, knowing we'd beat him later if he didn't choose us. I swear, I swallowed a gallon of lake water during that time. We were having a great time until…

"Hey, can I join in and even up the teams" that damned velvet voice filled my ears. I turned my head to look behind me and glared. Alice saw my glare.

"No, we're fine." Alice curtly dismissed her brother. She looked up at me with sad eyes. I shook my head.

"But, it's three against two. Surely you'd want to even up the teams; I could join your team Alice."

"Sure why not?" Emmett said enthusiastically. Alice turned to glare at Emmett.

"No. Three against two is perfectly fine; we were having a perfectly good time without you. We don't need you." Alice said without another look at her twin. She started splashing again, officially ending that conversation. Emmett looked confused for a moment but shook it off. I heard a sigh and then water moving away. I looked back at Rosalie and Jasper, both looking at me like they were sorry for me.

"What?" I asked them. Rosalie mumbled a "nothing" and went back to splashing but Jasper just kept staring at me. I turned away and started splashing again.

**A/N: Soooo there it is. I really hope you like it. I actually did that prank that Alice did. It was so much fun. The poem was a little different but, we had fun. So please please please review. It makes me happy!**

**~Dancerx11**


	6. Confuse Me Gently

**A/N: Okay, so here is chapter 5 of stranger. Hope this gives you an insight on what's going on.**

**Disclaimer: Twilight was not, is not, and never will be mine. Damn copyright…**

Chapter 5

Confuse Me Gently

EPOV (from beginning of camp)

I was excited to be going back to Camp Pacific Coast as the music director again this year. I loved it. Alice was happy to be a counselor again; she absolutely loved working with kids. When we got to the camp I dropped my stuff off at the staff lodge and went with Alice to unpack her things, and wow, did that girl have a lot of bags. I think there were 10 in total. I mean really, we weren't moving here. We were living here for the summer and knowing her; she'd go to the mall and buy more clothes anyway.

"Alice, why do you always bring so many suitcases? You always buy new clothes when we're here anyway." I asked her as I brought the last one into her cabin, Lodge 7 Cabin 4. She looked at me like I was crazy.

"Edward. I still want to wear clothes that I have at home, and I need choices! Plus, what if something comes up and I need an outfit that I wouldn't originally bring? This way I am completely prepared for any given fashion emergency. And what if I want something here? Should I just leave it because I brought a lot of clothes? No, I shouldn't" She said to me as if it were obvious.

"I still don't understand where you put all the new clothes you bring" I said shaking my head.

She sighed, "One of those suitcases has other bags to fit the new clothes I buy. Duh"

So _that's_ why it always seemed like she left with more bags than she came with. I never understood that. I will never understand girls for as long as I will live, I swear. I haven't met one that was even semi-normal.

Wait.

Scratch that.

I have. Mental sigh. And I remember her all too clearly. Even though all these years, I have tried so hard just to forget about her and move on, I can't. It's like she's permanently engraved into my head. I mean, I have had _plenty_ of girlfriends back home in Sacramento, and I really mean _plenty_. There wasn't one girl that even came close to what she was. I know I was young when I started liking her, but she was just so likeable, and so perfect. Well, she probably changed over the years. Actually, no, I don't believe that. She wouldn't change to fit the mold; it wasn't the way she worked. I knew her well enough to know that. All the girlfriends I had I compared to her, except for in the areas that I didn't have any memories to compare to.

As I was helping Alice unpack, I found the photo album of Alice and her. I remembered the countless times when Alice had begged me to look at it with her, but I just couldn't do it. I was trying to forget her, as where Alice was doing anything and everything to remember her, remember every little thing she could about her. She would think I was lucky if she knew how much I remembered of her without even trying. Me? I don't think it's a blessing, more of a curse. I was constantly reminded of her in every girl I saw, in every little girl, during every rain storm, on every cloudy day, every love song on the radio. I was reminded of her in the chick flicks I was forced to watch during dates, every police siren I heard reminded me of her father's job, every time my friends talked me into playing dodgeball. I thought of her when stories of our vacation to the Caribbean were told, every year on the first day of school, every time I did something or went somewhere for the last time. All I could see was her when a girl tripped, fell, or blushed, when girls expected me to pay on dates because I knew she never would have expected me to. My thoughts were constantly filled with her and it only made me hurt. The only things that didn't make me think of her were the things I did with other girls, the physical stuff. I had never once done anything of that sort, other than a hug, with her. It gave me a break from the pain.

When Alice was done unpacking I went back to the staff lodge to unpack my own belongings. I walked into my room and put my bag on my bed, ready to unpack, when I noticed another bag already on my bed. Huh, this had always been my room, and my bed on the left side. I used to room with Luke, the old lifeguard, until he got offered a better summer job. I was getting another roommate, the new lifeguard. Maybe he got here before I did. That's when I heard the door open.

I looked over to see a fairly tall blonde guy standing in the doorway. He had these blue eyes that pierced right through you as if they could tell exactly what you were feeling and thinking. But they also had a softness to them that made you feel like they could understand what you were feeling and thinking. Whoa. I just analyzed a dude's eyes. I really need to stop hanging with my sister.

"Uh, hey. You must be my new roommate. I'm Edward Cullen." I said as I reached out to shake his hand. He looked at me for a second, almost scrutinizing me with his eyes. Then snapped out of it. He took my hand and shook it.

"Jasper Hale." He said. I smiled at him and he smiled back. "Uh, not trying to be rude or anything, but why did you put your suitcase on top of mine?"

"OH!" I said as I grabbed my suitcase off of his, "You see, my old roommate, the one you took over for, usually slept on the right side of the room and I guess I just did it out of habit. Sorry."

"Oh. Well, if that's where you want to sleep I can move over to the other side, it honestly doesn't matter to me what side I'm on" Jasper offered.

"No, that's fine. You were here first, it doesn't matter to me which side I sleep on anyway." I said as I unzipped my suitcase and started to unpack it. I unpacked in silence while Jasper sat on his bed reading. It was odd; it was like there was this tension in the room, though I had no qualms with Jasper. I wonder what he was annoyed with me about, unless I'm crazy.

"So, where are you from?" I asked Jasper, trying to ease the tension a bit.

"Uh, I live in Phoenix, Arizona." He answered me, then as if it was polite to ask me too, "You?"

"Sacramento, California." He nodded and went back to his book. "How'd you find out about CPC?"

He sighed and put his book down. He ran his hand through his hair.

"Uh, my sister and I were looking for a job for the summer, since I'm going to college in the fall." I nodded.

"That's cool. Does your sister work here?" Maybe I could hook up with her… I wonder what she looks like… oh but that might be awkward if I hook up with my roommate's sister…

"Yeah, she's a counselor here with our best friend. They're actually in the same cabin, so they're happy." Hmm… best friend? In the same cabin? That must mean it's a girl… I wonder what this friend looks like…

"Well, that's good, you know someone here your first summer. I don't know what I'd do without my sister when I was starting out here" I said as I remembered the first time Alice and I came to this camp, it was the summer after we moved to Sacramento. Our parents thought it would be a good way to stop being upset about leaving… her. I shook off that thought and looked at the clock. Holy crap! We had to get to the dining hall.

Jasper and I walked to the dining hall where he bid me goodbye, saying that he wanted to find his sister and their friend. I quickly found Alice and we sat down as Chrissy called everyone's attention up front. She talked about what was expected of us, what we would have to do, and all the crap I already heard a couple years ago. I looked around the room and found that quite a few of the counselors were new people. There were some faces that I knew though, like Emmett, Tanya, Kate, Garrett, Mike, Jessica, and Lauren. I shivered in disgust when I saw Jessica and Lauren. They had always wanted to hook up with me. I actually hooked up with Lauren once, but let's just say I'd rather not have any sort of repeat of that. Chrissy started the introductions and after a little bit, I heard Jasper speak. I turned around and started to listen because he said he was sitting with his sister and their friend. Jasper sat back down and the person sitting next to him stood up.

My heart almost stopped.

It was her.

I'd know her from anywhere, even though I hadn't seen her in years. It was _her_. Then she spoke.

"Hi everyone. Um, I'm Bella Swan and I live in Phoenix. I'm 17 and…" She paused for a second and gave a sort of guilty smile, "…to be honest, I didn't actually apply here myself. One of the women I baby sit for was helping to look for new counselors and suggested me. And apparently I was hired. I guess I accepted because I really love kids and think it would be great to work with them for a summer"

I couldn't believe it. My own personal angel was going to be here the whole summer. I hadn't seen her in six years. I looked over at Alice, whose face had lit up when she heard her best friend's name. At home, Alice really didn't have that many friends. She stuck around me, but never really talked. People liked her, but she really didn't have anyone but me that she was close to. I smiled at Alice's smile. She hadn't smiled like that since she last saw her.

Then a very pretty blonde stood up. Wow, she looked _a lot_ like Jasper. I guessed that this was his sister. She was good looking, no doubt if I was anywhere else or I didn't know Jasper I'd try and hook up with her, but I knew better than that. Plus, with _her_ in the room, everyone paled in comparison. When she started talking she confirmed that she was Jasper's sister, her name was Rosalie Hale, and that she was friends with_ her_. Once everyone had gone, we all started socializing with one another. A couple of the old counselors came and talked to me but I wasn't very interested. I was looking for _her_. I wanted to talk to her.

I looked all over for her but I couldn't find her. I was getting very frustrated. I decided to find Jasper, thinking that he might be near her or know where she went or something. Maybe he would want to introduce me to her. Like I would need an introduction, there was no way she forgot about me. I mean seriously, it's me, Edward Cullen. How could she forget a face like mine? I really started to get annoyed when I couldn't even find Jasper. Where the hell were all these people? I mean really. How come all of the people I _didn't_ want to talk to kept coming up to me?

"Edward!" I heard someone yell from behind me. I rolled my eyes and turned around. I was then ambushed by a head of strawberry blonde hair.

"Tanya! Wow, how are you?" I asked her as she pulled back from the hug.

"I'm good. Excited about working here this summer!" Tanya said enthusiastically.

"Yeah! I'm so happy you got the job! This summer is definitely going to be an awesome one now that you're working here too. Plus, people won't get the wrong idea about our friendship anymore" I said as I nudged her playfully. Tanya had just turned 16 and was now able to work here as a counselor. Last year she was a camper and I was a counselor. I had known her from previous years, when I had been a camper myself. We had had a couple make out sessions here and there but nothing too serious. I had started to actually like her, which was out of the ordinary for me, but then one summer she came back with news of a boyfriend, Felix. The whole boyfriend situation kind of nipped the whole make out randomly thing in the butt; I promised myself that I'd never go after someone who had a boyfriend, even if I thought that they'd choose me over their boyfriend, which was quite often that girls offered that. Anyway, we got in trouble because we had become friends since then and were always really close, it made it look like we were secretly dating, a no no at CPC.

"I know! I got so mad at that last year, I mean really, I have a boyfriend of three years, seriously grow up!" She said with a laugh as she hugged me again. "It's so good to see you though." Tanya and I started talking for a bit before we were interrupted by another old time friend.

"Tanya! Edward!" Kate yelled from across the room before running over to hug us. And, surely, Garrett was walking behind her. The two of them met while they were campers here. Kate was a tough girl, hard to make an impression on. Garrett tried relentlessly for years before Kate finally admitted that she had liked Garrett the whole time. They have been together ever since; wherever you find one, you find the other. Garrett, Kate, Tanya, and I had been friends for a while when we were campers. We couldn't wait for the day when all four of us were counselors. Kate and Garrett were a year older than me, so it took a couple of years for us all to be counselors.

After a little while, I said goodbye to them and went to try and find Alice. It had occurred to me while I was talking to Tanya, Kate, and Garrett that Alice would try and find _her_ the minute she knew she was here. So, if I found Alice, I would find _her._ But, again, I couldn't find the person I was looking for. It was then that I realized that there weren't a lot of people still in the dining hall to begin with. So, the people that I had been trying to find for probably an hour weren't even here. With a frustrated sigh, I walked back to the staff lodge and plopped down on my bed. I groaned and held my face in my hands.

I didn't know how to deal with the fact that _she _was here. I hadn't spoken to her in six years. _Six years._ I knew that was my fault. It wasn't like she never tried to contact me; I just never returned her calls. I wanted to talk to her, but I couldn't. I was too afraid of the pain. I knew that the moment I heard her voice, all the pain that I had numbed would come back more painful than before. And I was right. The moment I heard her voice, saw her, looked into those deep chocolate eyes, saw that beautiful blush creep up the gorgeous heart shaped face she had, watched her bite those lips, all of the memories and all of the pain came flooding back to me. She was so beautiful now, I mean, she had always been pretty, but she was gorgeous now. She probably had every guy in Phoenix running after her. Probably had a boyfriend. I felt the jealousy fill me at the thought. How could she still be affecting me this way? I haven't seen her in six years and still, she has a hold on me that is impossible to break. Even time and distance couldn't kill the feelings I've had for her since childhood.

The next morning, Jasper and I walked to the dining hall for breakfast. One thing I loved about this camp was the food. The food was always delicious. Jasper and I ate breakfast fairly quietly. We talked a bit, but not enough to be really considered as friends. I still didn't understand what problems he had with me. I mean really, why wouldn't he like me? I didn't do anything wrong. I didn't do anything wrong at all. Must be something weird. When I was finished I went to bring my dishes up to the table when I noticed _her_ walk up too. Hm, maybe I'll get to talk to her.

I turned around for a second to look back at Jasper; I still didn't understand what was with him. As I turned around I knocked into someone. I looked down and into two deep chocolate eyes. They were wide and filled with, was it recognition? I stared into the beautiful eyes for what seemed like an eternity. I knew those eyes. I had known those eyes since I was nine years old. They were the eyes that I couldn't get out of my head no matter how hard I tried. The eyes that haunted my dreams, haunted me. I was about to say something when I heard _her_ bell like voice.

"Sorry" she said quickly and before I knew it she was 10 feet away from me on her way back to her table. I sighed. She didn't want to talk to me. Why else would she have run? Well, actually, she could just be embarrassed. Or shy. I mean, I am a little intimidating to talk to, I'm Edward Cullen, of course I'm intimidating to talk to! But, she's an old time friend; of course I'd be nice to her. Actually, if she let me, I'd be more than nice to her. The thought made me smile. Oh the things I could do with her if she let me… _Stop, Edward, this is camp. You can't think about these things out in the open. You don't want to embarrass yourself now do you? Plus, why would she want to do anything with you? You ignored her for six years! _ I thought to myself and I pushed the thoughts of what I could do with _her_ to the back of my mind. I could think about this later. I saw her talking to Rosalie and Alice at the table. Alice was shaking her head and she stood up. She came skipping over to me, perky as ever.

"Hello Alice" I said politely. She stopped right in front of me with a look on her face.

"Don't you 'hello' me, mister. How could you pass up that opportunity to talk to Bella?" I winced at the sound of her name. It hurt to hear it.

"It's not my fault she ran off like a scared little girl the moment I looked at her"

"Um, YES IT IS YOU DOLT!" Alice said as if I should have known all along.

"And how exactly is it my fault that she decided to run off? What did I do to her?" I asked defensively, "more like what _can_ I do to her" I added as an afterthought, hoping Alice didn't hear that. I looked up. Yep she definitely heard me.

"Listen, Edward. She's not one of your ditzy little girlfriends okay? You're not going to use her and then throw her to the side when you're done. She's better than that. I've seen you do that to girls in the past, now some of those girls may have deserved to be kicked to the curb, but it still hurts them. I will not let you hurt Bella." Wince "We've already hurt her for the past six years by not talking to her. I just got her back, and I won't let you mess this up for me!"

"Alice, it's not like I'm going to see her after camp anyway! Why should I get attached? She lives in Phoenix, we live in Sacramento. That's at least a day's trip away." Alice started glaring at me. She took a couple steps closer to me and angrily whispered,

"Well, _I_ plan on keeping her in my life. If you don't want anything to do with her, then stay the _hell_ away from her. Don't start any sort of relationship with her, because I will not stand by and allow her to get hurt by you. I've watched you hurt and break other girls, I will _not _let that happen to Bella." Stab to the heart "Don't. Try. _Anything._" And she turned around and stalked off.

During the usual tour of the camp, I hung around with Tanya, Kate, and Garrett. I noticed that Jasper and Emmett were hanging out. Jasper seemed completely at ease with Emmett, not that that was completely unusual; Emmett was pretty easy to hang with. But it got me angry. Why did Jasper act like I was carrying some sort of infectious disease whenever he was around me? What have I done that gets him so angry and makes him act so hostile around me? It's not like I really care what other people think of me, it's just that I've known this kid for all of two days and he's hated me from the start! I didn't do anything to offend him! At least I didn't think I did…

"So what do you think of the new counselors?" Tanya asked me during the tour. It wasn't like any of the four of us had to pay attention. We knew the camp like the backs of our hands.

"I don't know. I've only really talked to Jasper and he seems pretty cool" No need to tell Tanya about Jasper's apparent unease with me.

"Alice seems quite taken with her fellow counselors" Tanya commented. This confused me.

"Fellow counselors?"

"Yeah, two of the new girls, Rosalie and Bella" wince "are in her cabin this year. It's like she already knows them forward and back. I talked to her for a bit earlier. She says you guys knew Bella when you lived in Washington?" I nodded curtly. "I take it you don't like her very much?"

"It's not that" Tanya waited for an explanation; I took a deep breath, "It's complicated." She nodded in understanding.

"Well, she said that she likes Rosalie too, who is apparently very protective of Bella" Tanya said. That caught my interest.

"Protective? Why?" I asked, intrigued.

Tanya smiled warily, "I'm not completely sure. Alice didn't really tell me, it's not my business anyway, but I guess it was just that something happened to Bella in the past that made Rosalie very cautious when it comes to Bella." I nodded.

I looked over to where _she_ was. I saw her laughing. She threw her beautiful head of mahogany hair back in laughter at something that someone said. I smiled, she looked so happy; it was hard to believe that someone or something could have hurt her so much that one of her friends became protective over her. It made me wonder what kind of monster did whatever it was to her.

Throughout the tour, I would look over at _her_. A couple times, she caught my eye and quickly looked away. God, she was beautiful now. Her heart shaped face was a soft ivory color, despite where she lives, her lips a plump pink with rosy cheeks to match. Her eyes were a deep chocolate brown and her hair shined with red highlights in the sunlight. She was absolutely breathtaking.

We all had lunch before we had to go to our swim test. Jasper was administering the test as the lifeguard. I knew I had nothing to fear, I was an excellent swimmer. The thing I was nervous about was seeing _her_ in a bathing suit. I mean, I knew she had a great body, I could see from just looking at her. But it was going to be something completely different actually seeing the body in as little clothes as was acceptable in public. I was laying down my towel when I looked up. She was shimmying her shorts down her legs at a tortuous pace. I couldn't help but stare. Then she started to take off her blue tank top. As the fabric inched up little by little, I could feel my swimsuit get a bit tighter, nothing that was a huge problem but was a little uncomfortable. Despite my predicament, I couldn't look away. I was right, she had the perfect body. She was wearing a delicious blue halter bathing suit. As my eyes roamed her body I saw her turn her head a bit, catching my stare. I never really stare at a girl because Esme had taught me better than that, she taught me to respect women, even though I didn't usually completely respect them, I would never stare. But this time, I couldn't get my eyes to unglue from her body.

Jasper started explaining about the different sections in the water. Each level was a little deeper than the previous. We would all have to take a test to see which level we were allowed to swim in. I was planning on going in a group with Tanya, Kate, and Garrett, but when _her_ group was going and needed a fifth person, I found myself running over whilst taking my shirt off to join the group. I meant to say something to her but by the time I got over there, the three of them had skipped off to the water, leaving Emmett and I in the dust.

We all hopped in the water and started swimming. As I was swimming I saw that _she_ wasn't that far ahead of me. So, I sped up. She must have noticed me doing this because every time I got close to her, she sped up too. Before I knew it she was out of the water walking towards Jasper. He said something to her that made her laugh and she walked over to where Chrissy was sitting to give out bracelets. I walked up to Jasper.

"Blue bracelet, Edward" He said in a bored voice. I frowned, confused because he obviously wasn't in _that_ bad of a mood if he was joking around with _her_ not two minutes ago. I walked down the dock to Chrissy as Chrissy was snapping a blue band onto _her_ wrist. Chrissy snapped a blue bracelet onto my wrist and I went to go talk to _her_. Now was my chance because she wasn't around anyone and I didn't have to be anywhere. I took a deep breath and walked over to her towel. She wasn't facing me, she was bent over (and I was trying not to look at her ass) drying off her legs.

"Hey B-" I was cut off by Tanya calling me over to where they were sitting. I sighed reluctantly and jogged over.

"Yeah?" I asked as I sat down.

"Why didn't you wait for our turn for the swim test?" Tanya asked, feigning hurt. I rolled my eyes at her.

"Emmett's group needed a fifth person, and I know him and Alice so why not?" Tanya started laughing.

"Edward, it's okay. I know that you used to like her." My head snapped back to Tanya.

"What? Who? When?"

"You used to like Bella. I don't know when. But it's pretty obvious that if you don't still like her, which I'm not completely sure about, then you used to like her when you lived in Washington. Why didn't you talk to her after the swim test?" Tanya asked me. Oh great, she was trying to play matchmaker. Ever since she was taken by Felix, she's been trying to find someone for me to be with. I loved Tanya like a sister, but I didn't need her help finding a girl. _Trust me._

I let out a frustrated sigh, "That's what I was doing when you called me over. I was about to say hi when you yelled my name" Her eyes widened then filled with guilt.

"Oh Edward! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to! Go back over there now then, and talk to Bella" I looked back over to where _she_ was. Alice, Rosalie and Emmett were sitting with her and talking. No use trying now, Alice would murder me.

"Nah, all her friends are around now, it'd be awkward." Tanya gave me a sad smile and changed the subject thankfully. I sat with Tanya, Kate, and Garrett while we waited for the swim tests to be over. We were talking about the years when we were all campers when Lauren's shriek interrupted. She was demanding a blue bracelet without taking the swim test. It was fairly amusing until she said my name. She wanted to be in the same section as me. I shuddered in disgust.

"EDDIEKINS!" I heard her yell and my eyes went wide with fear as I saw her stalking towards me. I looked over at my friends for help. They just laughed at my expense. Lauren kept getting closer and closer to me and I had no idea what to do. "Eddie, what am I going to do? Now I can't swim with you" She whined as she sat down next to me and grabbed my arm. I looked down at her in horror before moving away as fast as I could.

"Um, Lauren, first of all don't call me Eddie. Second, it's not really a big deal if you can't swim in the same section as me. Actually, it's better." I said as nicely as possible. She looked at me with a confused look.

"But Eddie, it's so boring in the first section, why would you want to swim in that section with me?" oh wow, this girl was seriously delusional.

"I'm not. Trust me, if you are in the water, I will not be in the same section as you." That's when the guys behind me couldn't hold in their laughter and the laughter burst out. Lauren huffed and walked off. I felt like throwing up after that little encounter.

"Looks like Edward has a-an admi-rer" Tanya said in a fit of laughter. She grabbed her stomach and fell backwards on to Kate, who was red in the face and had tears streaming down her cheeks she was laughing so hard. Garrett was hitting the ground and shaking his head back and forth through his laughter. I didn't find the situation amusing at all. Once they controlled their laughter, we went back to talking about old times. I kept stealing glances at _her_, she was beautiful. A while later Jasper told everyone that free swim was now starting and I heard a bunch of people run into the water. I looked up as I heard two small shrieks. I saw a splash and _she_ was looking very smug on the end of the dock. A second later, Rosalie and Alice came up and started laughing. I smiled; she must have pushed them in or something along those lines. I kept watching them. I saw Emmett pick her up and I was instantly jealous. How could she let him _touch_ her when she wouldn't even _talk_ to me? I mean she knew me better than she's ever known Emmett. Hell, she's only known Emmett a day! That's when I heard Emmett yell.

"CANNONBALL!" and he jumped into the water, still holding onto _her_. I wanted to be him so badly. I saw her come to the surface shortly after that and she and Emmett bantered back and forth. Then she and Rosalie splashed Emmett, effectively starting what looked like a splash war. I watched them splash each other back and forth, Rosalie and _her_ against Alice and Emmett. Jasper eventually jumped in on Rosalie and _her_ side. I sighed in longing, wanting to be there with them.

"Edward… Earth to Edward…" I heard Garrett saying in the background. I turned around to my friends. "Dude, why don't you go and join them instead of watching them"

"Yeah, you look like a first class creeper just sitting there staring." Kate agreed. I looked at them and then looked back at Alice and everyone. I turned back to my friends.

"See ya!" I said as I jumped up and jogged down to the water. I swam into section two and walked up to them. "Hey, can I join in and even up the teams?"

_She_ had her back to me and I saw her head turn and look over her shoulder at me. The look on her face surprised me. She was glaring.

"No, we're fine." Alice said while crossing her arms and also glaring at me. What was with these people and glaring at me? Well, I knew why Alice was glaring; she didn't want me around _her_. So, I tried to reason with her.

"But, it's three against two. Surely you'd want to even up the teams; I could join your team Alice." Maybe if I wasn't directly connected to _her_, Alice would let me in.

"Sure why not?" Emmett said, acceptingly. I always liked Emmett. Alice turned to glare at him, as if to say 'what are you _doing!?_'

"No. Three against two is perfectly fine; we were having a perfectly good time without you. We don't need you." Alice said to me without looking. She then started to splash _her_ again and I knew that my fight was over. I lost. I looked back at _her_, sighed and waded back out of the water and back up to my towel. She didn't even speak up, saying that she wanted me there. _But she didn't tell you to go away_ I reminded myself. I took a deep breath and lay down on my towel. No one said anything, probably noticed my mood. I was going to get her to be my friend again.

I'd work at it all summer if I had to. _She will be my friend again. _

**A/N: Okay, so I know that this chapter might have been a little confusing. It was supposed to be. Basically, Edward obviously still likes Bella, but he's confused as to why she's not responding and he's torn by his playerish ways. I don't know if I portrayed that right but, I hope I did. So, if you have any questions or are still confused, don't be scared to ask. Oh, and the bathing suits and stuff are on my profile so if you'd like to check those out, go ahead. Please review!**


	7. Testing My Control

**A/N: Ah! I finally got it done. So, if you read my previous author's note you'll know that I was being a lazy author and didn't get the chapter up. Then it got deleted from my computer, so I've been spending a week trying to get it back to what it was. So here it is and I am sooooo sorry for the delay. So, get reading chapter 6 of Stranger!**

**Disclaimer: It's still not mine…**

Chapter 6

Testing My Control

BPOV

It was now a couple days before the first round of campers arrived. I had successfully avoided _him_ whenever possible and I met a lot of the other counselors here. Other than Jessica and Lauren, most of the counselors were very friendly. There was the archery, theater, and high ropes instructors, Tyler, Eric, and Mike. All three of them hit on me whenever I was around, it was kind of creepy. Then there were the arts and crafts and the horseback riding instructors, Angela and Kate. They were both really sweet. Angela was shy like me and was really nice. Kate was very laid back, I liked her. Some of the counselors who worked with the campers like me, Rose, and Alice were Tanya, Garrett, Ben, James, Victoria, Laurent, Carmen, Eleazar, Irina, Seth and Zafrina. They were all nice enough. No one other than Lauren and Jessica really got on my nerves that much.

Everyone was excited about today because all we had on our schedule today was an early morning meeting, at _8 AM_ to be exact, and then we were getting tonight and tomorrow morning off, so everyone was going out apparently. The meeting was in the dining hall as usual and Chrissy was perky perky perky, as usual.

"Alright, so as most of you know, part of the campers' day is their skilled activity. Those include: theater, music, sports, horseback riding, archery, arts and crafts, high ropes, and canoeing and kayaking. Each of the skilled activities has a leader. I have already broken you guys up into groups to work in the activities. The leader's job is to teach the activities and the other two counselors are to watch the campers and help out. In theater we have Eric, the leader, with Victoria and Irina. For horseback riding we have Kate, the leader, with Garrett and Laurent. For sports the leader is Emmett, with the counselors Rosalie and Zafrina. In archery the leader is Tyler, working with Lauren and James. In arts and crafts the leader is Angela with counselors Ben and Seth. For high ropes Mike is the leader and Jessica and Eleazar are the counselors. In music, Edward is the leader along with counselors Bella and Tanya. And last, canoeing and kayaking has Jasper as its leader and Alice and Carmen as the counselors."

Oh, no she _didn't_. She _did not_ put me in the same group as _him_. Ugh! Of all the luck in the world. Of course I'd get stuck with him. This camp is out to get me I swear…

"Now, get in your groups and discuss what types of activities you would like to do with the campers and get to know each other. You'll be working together the whole summer" Chrissy ended and she winked towards me. Why'd she wink?

I sighed and reluctantly got up in search of Tanya and _him_. They were sitting in a corner talking to each other and laughing. The weird part was that she was hugging him around the waist and had her head resting on his chest. He was resting his head on top of hers as they shook with laughter. I cautiously approached them. Tanya looked up.

"Oh hey Bella!" She said with a smile as she continued to hold onto him. He looked up from Tanya at the sound of my name. I looked up and met his eyes.

"Hi" I said timidly, "Um, should we start?" I said, my voice shaking a bit. They both nodded and we sat. I looked at him nervously. Tanya untangled herself from him and started talking.

"So, I already know Edward fairly well, and he knows me. But I know nothing about you, and that definitely has to change. So, why don't you tell us about yourself?" Tanya said with a smile. She really was a sweet girl. I looked at _his_ face for a second… surely he didn't forget everything he knew about me right?

"Um, well, I'm 17, I'll be 18 in September… uh, I was born in Forks, Washington… but I live in Phoenix, Arizona with my mom and my step-dad. My parents are divorced…um… yeah." I said quietly.

"Oh, you were born in Forks? So, you knew Edward right?" Tanya asked me. I looked at him with my mouth open a bit, about to say something, but stopped. Tanya knew _he _lived in Forks? Did that mean she knew about me? I closed my mouth. No, she couldn't. He couldn't call me or contact me at all, why would he talk to people about me?

"Yeah… I did. Alice and I were best friends, so I saw him around the house…" I said with a cold voice. I knew that was a low blow, acting like I only knew him because he was Alice's brother, not because he was my best friend. I looked him in the eye when I said this and I thought I saw pain flash across his eyes. Oh, did that hurt? Well, it could only have been a fraction of the pain I felt.

"Your parents divorced?" He asked in a quiet voice but not surprised; obviously remembering the times I would run to his house crying. I nodded, remembering the same thing. He gave me a sad smile.

"I decided to move to Phoenix with Renee. She needed to get out of Forks and I found that I felt the same way. She said that there were too many memories in Forks. I agreed with her." Now his head fell to look at his lap. I was just barely letting him in on all the pain that his departure filled within me. Tanya stayed quiet, almost like she understood what was going on between me and _him_.

"That must have been a hard move, to leave so many memories behind" He said, a little bit of pain leaking into his voice.

"It was a little hard at first. But, I had seen a couple people I loved do the same without any hurt, so I figured I could do it too. And then I met Rosalie and Jasper and the pain seemed to disappear. I found some _real_ friends I could count on, something I needed but never quite got." I knew he could hear the double meanings in my words. To an outsider, it sounded like I had found some really good friends when I moved, something kids who move don't get at first a lot. But to him, he knew that I was telling him that he wasn't a real friend and never had been, and that he wasn't hurt when he left.

"Well, that's a good thing" Tanya said with a smile. Yeah, she didn't hear the double meanings in my words. That's a good thing, they weren't meant for her. Tanya started telling me a bit about herself next. She had a boyfriend of three years, Felix, and she lived up in Alaska, but loved to come down to California for camp. She loved the sun but never got much up in Alaska. _He_ and Tanya had been good friends since they met at camp around 4 years ago.

"It was actually kind of entertaining, because last year everyone thought we were dating because we were so close!" Tanya said with a laugh and _he_ smiled. "Even though everyone knew I had a boyfriend, they couldn't believe that we could just be friends. I mean there might have been one point when we first met that we touched on that subject a bit, but then I met Felix and fell in love with him. I'm going to marry him someday, I know it" She said with love in her eyes. I was happy that Tanya had found love and I was happy that it wasn't with _him. _I mean, he wasn't mine and he never was or will be, but I couldn't help but not want anyone to be with him.

"Well, I guess Edward doesn't have to tell anything about himself, I mean we both know him pretty well." Tanya said with a smile. My smile faltered and she saw. "Wait, you _do_ know him well right? I mean, you guys were friends when you were younger and you were best friends with Alice so she must have caught you up on what Edward was doing…"

"Actually, I haven't heard from him in five years. I've been completely clueless as to the goings on in his life." I looked directly at him when I said this. Tanya saw the obvious tension between us.

"Oh… well, I'll just let you two work this out." Tanya said and got up and left the dining hall, as we were the only group left in here now. I guess that either people decided to go to wherever they were working and plan, or were finished. We sat there for a moment in silence; I refused to look at him and I had no idea if he was even acknowledging my presence. After a couple minutes of neither of us saying a word I got up to leave. I sure as hell didn't want to talk to him and he obviously didn't want to talk to me. Or at least that's what I thought. I was walking towards the door when something stopped me. Someone had grabbed my wrist and wasn't letting go.

"Bella…" His velvet voice filled my ears and I held back the tears that were threatening to spill over. I said nothing. "Please, can we talk?"

"Talk?" I said quietly. "_Now_ you want to talk?!" I turned to face him with anger present on my face. "For five years you couldn't be bothered to just pick up the phone and call me and you want to _talk_? What am I only your friend when it's convenient to you?" He looked down.

"Bella, I am so sorry for the past five years. I was just so busy and whenever you'd call, I'd get the message so late, I-I didn't want to bother you. I haven't had a lot of free time." He looked back up at me. "I was hoping we could start over. You know be friends again?" Friends. There's that damn word again. Could I be friends with him again when he had hurt me so badly in the past? Could I just be friends with him when I knew I wanted to be so much more than friends?

"I don't know, Edward" That was the first time I had spoken his name in I didn't know how long. It felt good, but it hurt at the same time. "You hurt me pretty bad by not talking to me. I'll try, but I can't trust you right now. I hope you understand that." He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. I couldn't help but notice that he looked really hurt.

"I understand that. I will earn your trust back, I promise." He said with a determined looked in his eyes. Then a small cloud of confusion was present in those green orbs. "What I don't understand is why has Alice gotten your trust so quickly?"

I looked down. "That's between Alice and me, Edward. And my problems with her were completely different than those with you." He nodded slowly and smiled. I smiled back.

We then went to find Tanya and spent an hour or so coming up with ideas for activities to do with the campers. It was really nice just talking and joking around with Edward and Tanya. Tanya was really creative and came up with a bunch of amazing activities to do, and I could tell that we would be friends even after camp. I mean sure, she was absolutely gorgeous and I felt more than plain next to her, but since when had I _not_ surrounded myself with exceedingly beautiful people? The three of us got lunch together and I was surprised how well it went. We were laughing and I found myself having as much fun as I did when I was with Rosalie and Alice. Later, I returned to my cabin to find Alice and Rosalie fighting over an outfit.

"No! Not that top! Here, this one will help accentuate her boobs… see there's the ruffles on top and the ribbon under the bust"

"Ooo, you're right, I didn't even see that one! Oh and these boots, definitely, they complete the outfit."

"Perfect, Rose. We couldn't have picked out a better outfit for her"

I walked in very confused. All around the room were different items of clothing; tops, pants, skirts, boots, heels, scarves, vests, and jewelry. Alice and Rosalie were standing over Rose's bed with an outfit laid out on top. Oh no…

"Bella!" Alice cried, "Come over here so we can get you ready for tonight"

I hesitated, "What's going on tonight?"

"Some of the counselors are going out to dinner and then to an underage club for a couple hours and you're coming with us" Rosalie answered. As I was about to protest, "And no, you can't get out of it Bell, you're coming with us." She gave me a look that told me I wasn't going to win this. Alice then thrust a bunch of clothes at me and threw me into the stall to change. I dressed in the clothes she gave me. I came out of the stall and looked at myself in the mirror. I had a blue ruffled tank on with a black ribbon tied in a bow just under the bust. The jeans I was wearing were dark stone wash skinnies with a couple of rips and tears down the legs. The boots they had given me were black flats with a couple buckles up the sides. I put the black dangling earrings in and the love necklace on. I walked back into the room and showed Alice and Rose; they wolf whistled at me, which made me laugh.

Three hours later we were all ready and Alice had straightened my hair pin straight. Alice had an adorable gray sweater dress on with bubbled sleeves. She had a matching gray knit beanie, black pumps, silver dangling earrings and a silver bag. Her hair was flipped out in its usual spikey nature, but softened. Rosalie looked drop dead gorgeous. She had a dark blue corset on with a black cropped vest over it. With that she wore white skinnies with white heeled boots with buckles up the side like mine. She had on thin silver bangles and rose shaped earrings. Her hair was curled at the ends. Even though I looked better than I do on the average day I still felt plain compared to them.

It was 5:30 when we met up with everyone that was going. Tanya, Kate, Garrett, Jessica, Lauren, James, Emmett, Jasper and Edward were all going with us. Rose, Alice and I took one look at Jessica and Lauren's outfits and had to hold our laughter in. Jessica was wearing a one shouldered blue cheetah print chiffon dress that barely covered her butt. For accessories she wore these huge gold dangling earrings, one gold bangle and gold gladiator heels. While she still looked like a whore, she looked classier than Lauren. Lauren had a mini denim skirt on with a promiscuous black corset, unlike Rose's whose had some class, short black boots, huge black hoops, a fashion Barbie necklace on and her hair in a ponytail. I looked over at Tanya and Kate, who both looked adorable. Tanya had an orange striped chiffon dress with complimenting earrings and necklace. She had these flats with a flower on the top that I had to admit were adorable. Her whole outfit worked perfectly, especially with her dark strawberry blonde hair. Kate had an emerald green satin tank on with white shorts, a green peep-toe pump and some silver earrings that kind of looked like feathers. The green really complimented her ice blonde hair. The two of them looked gorgeous.

Rose, Alice, Jasper, and I were going in Rosalie's BMW and the rest were splitting up between Emmett's massive jeep and Edward's Volvo. It took about a half an hour to get off of site and then out into the city. When Rosalie, Jasper and I drove in it was the middle of the day, so I had never seen Santa Ana lit up at night, it was beautiful and it was nice because it wasn't really busy like Las Vegas or Los Angeles would have been. We stopped for dinner at a place called Charlotte's.

"Hi, welcome to Charlotte's. How many?" The hostess asked, giving all of the boys a once over, eyes lingering on Edward, Jasper and Emmett.

"Twelve" Rose said with a snarl in her voice, making the hostess step back a bit. Rosalie always hated it when girls fawned on Jasper so when the hostess looked Jasper up and down, it was no surprise that it annoyed Rose. The surprising thing was that she looked over at Emmett when she said this.

"Right this way." The hostess said timidly. I nudged Rosalie in the side and all she did was give me an innocent look. I shook my head as we followed the hostess to our table. I sat down in between Alice and Rosalie who had Jessica and Lauren on her right. James and Garrett were at the heads of the table and Jasper was across from Alice, Edward across from me, Emmett across from Rosalie, and Tanya and Kate next to Emmett. Dinner started and it was a pleasant one. Surprisingly enough, Lauren and Jessica weren't annoyingly slutty during the meal. I mean their outfits screamed, "screw me now" but they didn't act like it. Throughout dinner I saw Alice and Jasper giving each other flirty eyes, even if they didn't speak a word to each other, and Rosalie and Emmett were bickering back and forth like an old married couple the entire time but I saw Rosalie smiling half the time.

Seeing Rose and Alice flirting with two guys that I knew were good for them made me happy. What didn't make me happy was the fact that Edward and I kept hitting each others legs under the table, by accident. Or at least mine were by accident. I conversed with everyone during dinner but I could feel Edward's eyes on me for the majority of the meal. Oddly enough, when I looked back at him he was always looking away and in a conversation, making me feel like I had just imagined him looking at me.

After dinner we all climbed back into our respective cars and drove off to the underage club, _Midnight Sun_. We all walked up to the line and with one look at Rosalie, Alice, Tanya and Kate, the bouncer let us in. Well, with the exception of Lauren and Jessica, they had to wait in line! I was surprised he let me in with everyone else, but I wasn't going to complain. We got a table and ordered some non-alcoholic drinks. As I was sipping on my virgin piña colada, out of the corner of my eye I saw Emmett ask Rosalie to dance and Jasper ask Alice, "May I have this dance, pretty lady?" They all walked onto the dance floor and disappeared into the crowd. I smiled to myself, happy for my friends. Kate pulled Garrett onto the floor along with Tanya and Edward. James had gone off to dance with Lauren and Jessica when they were finally let in, leaving me alone. I didn't have a problem with being alone; I didn't even really want to be here. I knew that if I tried dancing with anyone, I'd break their toes. It wasn't a secret; Bella can't dance.

Just as I finished my drink I felt someone tap my shoulder. I turned around to see a cute brunette boy standing there.

"Wanna dance?" He asked with his hand outstretched toward me. I smiled at him but shook my head, unable to find my voice. "Oh, come on, you're hot as hell and you're sitting here all alone. Just one dance?"

"You don't understand I am an awful dancer" I said looking straight at him, hoping he'd go away. But he didn't, all he did was get right up in my face and look me up and down.

"One dance won't hurt you, I'm a great teacher. You'd have a lot of… _fun _with me" When he said this he was so close that I could smell his breath. Alcohol. I started to back into the booth that I was sitting in but he only came closer. He put his hand on my shoulder and whispered in my ear, "Come on, baby, you know you want a little taste of Joey…"

I closed my eyes, not sure what to do when I heard a voice calling my name. I opened my eyes to see Edward standing next to Joey with two more piña coladas in his hands and glaring at him.

"Sorry it took me so long to get the drinks, babe, there were a ton of people at the bar. Can I help you?" Edward said with authority in his voice as he glared at Joey.

"Nope, we were just about to go for a dance, isn't that right?" Joey said as he grabbed my hand. As he grabbed it, Edward's hand was right on top of his.

"Now, you don't really want to force my girlfriend to dance with you when she clearly is repulsed by you now do you?" I heard Edward's voice snarl in his ear. I had never seen Edward act this way, pretending I was his girlfriend so Joey would back off, it was kind of hot. _No! It's not hot, you can't think of him that way! He'll just hurt you again!_ I thought to myself as I looked down at my hands, trying to clear my thoughts. I heard footsteps and looked up. Joey was walking away, angry and Edward was staring at him with a death glare as he did. I took a deep breath and as I did, Edward's head snapped back towards me and his expression had softened and was full of concern.

"Bella are you alright?"

"Yeah, it wasn't as bad as it looked." I smiled up at him and he looked back at me, almost not believing what I said. Whether he believed it or not, he accepted it and then stood there with his hand out towards me and I looked at it with confusion. He chuckled.

"Come on you can't sit here all night by yourself now can you?" I rolled my eyes at him.

"Do you not remember how awful a dancer I was when we were in Forks? Well, I've gotten worse if that's possible. So, I'm going to have to say that I can most _definitely_ sit here all night by myself. I'm perfectly content being alone." With that he grabbed my hand and pulled me up. "EDWARD!" I yelled and he just threw his head back with laughter.

He pulled me up against him, my back to his front, in true club style and my heart sped up. I was completely convinced he could hear it; it was pounding so hard and fast. He put his hands on my hips and started swaying to the beat of the music as _Dirrty_ by Christina Aguilera came on. I was so nervous to be dancing with Edward that I jumped when I heard him whispering in my ear, "Just relax, Bella… you look amazing tonight" I took a deep breath and just listened to the music. This seemed to work because I felt my heart slowing down a bit and was able to sway my hips to the beat comfortably.

_Ah, heat is up  
So ladies, fellas  
Drop your cups  
Body's hot  
Front to back  
Now move your ass  
I like that_

Listening to the lyrics, I got into the dance and started to lose myself.

_Tight hip huggers (low for sure)  
Shake a little somethin' (on the floor)  
I need that, uh, to get me off  
Sweat until my clothes come off_

All of a sudden I was dancing by myself.

I turned around, looking all over for Edward, confused as to what happened. I found him dancing with another girl that I didn't know. She was much prettier than I was and obviously had better moves than me. I looked down and shook my head. I fell for his tricks, just like every other girl. I pushed through the crowd to get back to the table, fighting tears the entire way. Instead of going to the table, I walked straight past it and into the bathroom. As I walked in I felt some tears escape and grabbed some paper towels to fix the make up that ran. I looked in the mirror after I fixed myself and took a couple deep breaths to steady myself and get myself together. I was upset, but not at Edward or what he did. I couldn't be, he's not my boyfriend, he was probably just dancing with me to get me comfortable and when he thought I was, left me so I could dance with other people. I was upset with myself for thinking that he wanted to dance with me because there was a chance he was attracted to me. I knew better than to think things like that, especially about him.

When I left the bathroom I ran into Alice and Rosalie.

"Bella! There you are, we've been looking all over for you. We're just about to leave." Rosalie said. She looked back and me and started scrutinizing me with her eyes. "Bell, what's wrong?" I just shook my head and told her I'd explain when we got back to the cabin. We went back to the rest of the group, Edward was talking to Tanya, Kate, and Garrett, laughing as if he hadn't rescued me and danced with me tonight. I knew he didn't care. As we walked to the cars it was as if he refused to look at me. Every time someone said my name, his head would slightly move in my direction but it would always move back to the conversation he was having. I was confused to say the least.

When we got back to the cabin it was almost midnight and all I wanted to do was shower and go to sleep. After I got out of the shower and ready for bed, Alice and Rose started interrogating me. I told them about what happened during the morning, at the restaurant, at the club with that kid, Joey, and when Edward just walked away after dancing with me. Alice looked murderous and Rosalie looked like she almost expected it.

I dreamt of Edward that night. We were back in the club and dancing, he turned me around so that I was facing him and just as he was about to kiss me, he was gone. I ran around frantically, yelling his name, only to find him making out with a random girl. When he finally looked up at me, he just laughed and started kissing the girl again. Then he disappeared again and I couldn't find him. I ran into Lauren and asked her where he was. All she said was that he left. He wasn't coming back. I woke with a start and breathing heavily. It was 3 AM. I got out of bed, grabbed a hoodie, and went to the porch of the lodge. I sat in a chair with my knees to my chin as the wind blew. I closed my eyes.

"Bella?" I heard a voice call. I opened my eyes and looked in the direction the voice came from. There in the pathway was Edward in his pajamas with a black hoodie on. "What are you doing out here?"

"Bad dream" I said as he sat down in the chair next to me. "What are you doing?" I asked him.

"I couldn't sleep, so I decided to take a walk… do you want to talk about it?" I looked at him with confusion.

"Talk about what?"

"Your dream."

Oh. I took a deep breath and shook my head.

"It's so peaceful out here at night" Edward said as he looked up at the stars.

"Yeah, it's as if everything in the world and in your mind is at peace. I can see why everyone loves it here" I said with a smile. Edward smiled back at me.

"So did you have a good time tonight?"

I thought about it. Yes, I had a good time at the restaurant and then in the beginning of the time at the club. No, I didn't have a good time the rest of the night though. But he couldn't know that.

"Yeah, it was nice to get away with everyone. You?" When I asked him this his mouth opened slightly then closed as if he wasn't sure how to answer.

"It was nice." was all he said. Shortly after that I excused myself to go back to bed. Just as I was about to open the door I heard him.

"Night, Bells. Sleep well." He said with a smile. I took a deep breath before turning around with a smile and wishing him the same. He called me Bells, something he hadn't done since we were 12.

When I got back into my bed, tears started running down my face again. It was then that I vowed that everything between me and Edward from now on was going to be in the friend zone. I wasn't going to cry over him and how I felt about him anymore.

**A/N: So, there it is people! I hope it wasn't too confusing. And just so you know, Bella still doesn't trust him; she kind of started to, but then stopped as she felt hurt again. And just so everyone knows, this kind of camp does exist, and the lodges aren't really like a hotel lodge, it's just a building that has a bunch of real cabins connected. Just so there isn't any confusion. It's based off of my camp. So, please review and I'll have the next chapter out soon!**

**~Dancerx11**


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